Disclaimer: I don't own the unusually large number of things I'm going to end up referring to in this chapter.
Chapter 14: Are You Looking For A Bean Shop, My Friend?
Mitsune reflected to herself as the opposing gunfire finally began to fade with their retreat. She'd been shooting like mad for over an hour, caught somewhere between worrying about getting hit herself and worrying about Keitaro doing something too heroic or noble and getting himself hurt in the process. They'd both been fighting (him especially, since his attire and, likely, identity drew much of the fire towards himself) almost nonstop the entire time, but they hadn't been very far apart for most of it. Every few minutes, he'd return to get more ammo and to check to see that she was still okay, and never strayed very far from her position when he could help it. Twice already, he'd saved her life; once when an enemy had managed to make their way around behind her, and a second time when he'd shielded her from a grenade blast using his armored body. The first time, she'd found out about it when the muscle-bound brute that was about to shoot her in the back of the head ended up auditioning for a boy's choir (quite beautifully) as he quite literally flew over her head. The second, she had escaped with little more than a few small cuts and freshly ringing eardrums, while Keitaro had ended up with quite a few of the sharper bits of shrapnel stuck to the plating on his back though his cloak.
She'd taken the opportunities as they came and embraced him, quickly but fully, on both occasions.
Now, though, she found herself searching hard for him, the air finally devoid of flying lead and steel enough to do so. She spotted Seta first, who was now limping ever so slightly from a slight graze wound on his left leg. Haruka was with him, her face hard and smudged, the folded outer edges of her long iron fan wet and discolored with blood. Mitsune remembered immediately the first time Haruka had whipped that thing out in the battle, faster than had seemed physically possible, to strike a leaping enemy in the head. The blow had all but bludgeoned the man, but the slice that followed took his head off entirely. The thick, razor-sharp edged blades of the oversized metal version of Haruka's most identifying personal effect proved deadly and useful more than once during the battle. For such an outlandish weapon, it had served the woman equally well as club, sword, and bulletproof shield in blinding succession throughout.
Keitaro, however, was not with either of them, and Mitsune had to search across several tunnel entrances to finally spot him. When she did, she found him hard at work, using his suit's abilities to heal what wounds he could wherever he could. There was blood all over him, though (she hoped) not any of his own; his once gleaming sword now barely shone for the streaks of crimpson that covered its length. Yet as she watched him divide strips of cloth out of the wounded man's shirt with the barest of touches with its edge, she could see it was as sharp as ever. How much steel and flesh and bone had that weapon sliced today?
She found herself not really wanting to think about it.
Keitaro himself did not seem so tired as she felt, at least physically speaking; whether due to his own incredible endurance and recent bout of rest, the extra boost of his armor, or both, he was still moving with unyielding relentlessness, the drive that had propelled him through the fighting still in full effect well over an hour later. It surprised her, seeing him like this; just days ago, he had been half-dead from exhaustion.
Now, fully rested, it seemed like there was no stopping him.
The number of wounded around him, however, seemed oddly greater than she would have expected. For all the intense fighting of the past hour, most of the defenders were still standing; she'd seen only ten get killed or seriously hurt from where she had been. Thanks in large part to skill and better bodily protection, few had wounds, and fewer still had serious ones. Why, then, were there so many wounded here?
It occurred to her in that moment that most of the wounded she saw nearby weren't wearing the gear of the Guardians; unless they had somehow lost the bulky equipment in the battle, it could only mean that they were mostly from the other side. She frowned to herself, considering this. They weren't the nicest looking lot to begin with; most reminded her of petty thugs and criminals, at most a step above the type that had assaulted her only a week earlier. Yet there was Keitaro, binding their wounds even as he bound their hands and feet, moving fast as lightning from person to person regardless of their origins! Somehow, each one of the enemy he helped went unconscious the moment he touched their foreheads, his glowing hands telling Mitsune that he was doing that on purpose.
Finally, he stood up, finished with every injured man nearby, and spotted Mitsune watching him. "I know it's probably not the best of ideas," he said mildly, wiping the excess blood off his gauntlets onto a torn rag that might've been someone's shirt, "but most of these guys I took down myself, and they won't live long without at least some help."
"Wait—you actually wanna help these guys?" she asked incredulously.
He chuckled. "Honestly? Most of them probably don't deserve any help at all, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna live with the guilt of leaving them there to die after doing my best not to kill the bastards outright."
Mitsune nodded, understanding. "Still don't wanna kill anyone if you can help it, huh?"
"Yeah…pretty much," he said, half a smile appearing on his face.
She cocked her head to one side, feeling strangely curious about his acts. "So…how many of these guys did you end up...er, not killing, anyway?"
"How many?" He glanced around, thinking. "Not sure, exactly. I think they hauled most of the lightly injured off when they retreated, so there were more of them than this. Most of the ones I didn't go up against are either dead or retreating as well. Maybe…three and a half, four hundred or so? I lost count after about two-fifty or so."
It took her mouth about three seconds to fully drop. "Four hundred! Holy shit, Keitaro!" she exclaimed in disbelief, even as her brain worked overtime. There had been hundreds of them, as far as she could tell, and for every one she or somebody else had hit, Keitaro had already taken down at least three to five in rapid succession. "How many weren't as lucky, then?"
"So far? None that I know of. These guys were some of the worst off, I think. When they retreated a minute ago, a lot of the ones that could still move left, so...unless one of them dies along the way, none."
"…none? None at all? How is that—?"
"Remember which martial art I told you I liked most?"
She thought for a minute, trying to remember. The odd question made her think back to the quiet lunch they had shared an eon ago, or was it really just a few days earlier? It felt like forever to her, now. A part of her wished the problems they had faced in those moments were all they had to worry about now; how simple and easy they now seemed! "Yeah…I remember. Aikido, right?"
He nodded. "Though I didn't use it's techniques as much here, I kept the mindset, the reason for it: to protect oneself, to protect others, and to protect one's opponent as well. I couldn't stop them all without hurting them and making it so they weren't able to readily harm us as they could when they came, but I could preserve the one thing I couldn't give them back if I took it: their lives. Just because I can kill them doesn't mean I should, or will."
Again, her eyebrow went up. "So…what about their fingers? I noticed you chopping quite a few of them off along the way."
To her surprise, he laughed heartily. "They'll keep 'em on."
"What do you mean, they'll keep them on? You cut them off, didn't you?"
"Take a look for yourself," he said with a shrug, poking the nearest one with his foot. Mitsune glanced down to see what looked like a typical gang member, bound hand and foot with more than just rope. His right hand's palm and fingers were wrapped in somewhat bloody cloth, each firmly and expertly secured with its own small length of material. "I cut the gun right out of this guy's hand, and basically took half the hand in the process. But, he hasn't stayed that way since. All I had to do was knock him out and repair what I could of it using the pieces; the bones and flesh were easy enough for me, though the nerves'll probably take more work on his part to get back into working shape, I think. Granted, his hand might not ever work quite right again, but he'll still have the hand and some scars to remember me by and all of his digits intact. Who knows? Maybe he'll understand what mercy is when he looks at it and give it a try himself, maybe not. I'd rather he have a chance to put that hand to better use than he was today than not."
"Wait—you mean...you reattached half his hand?"
"Best as I could. At the very least, it'll give some doctor something to work with if he needs help later on. Guess he was lucky to be left behind, in the end; a lot of others left equally short-handed before I could do anything for them."
Mitsune considered him seriously. She had known Keitaro was compassionate, but she had never expected him to show it to quite that far a degree! "You do realize these guys were just trying to kill you, right?"
"Yeah, and if they didn't know I could've done the same to them by now and didn't, they will when they wake up. I'll bet quite a few probably weren't here by personal choice, either."
Confused, she asked him, "What makes you say that?"
He shrugged. "Look at these guys: most of 'em aren't any older than we are, Mitsune. Yeah, some of 'em are, but even they don't strike me as elite professionals. Hell, half of 'em were just amateur thugs; kids that didn't get a good break in life, and ended up on the street. I'm willing to bet at least some of them were ordered to attack by the powers-that be behind their own bosses rather than for any personal grudge against me in particular. Can't say they're here by choice if they're not."
A small smile crept on Mitsune's weary face. "Good point, but look who's talking."
He chuckled. "Yeah, well, I've got good reasons for sticking around. They, on the other hand, don't. Think of the kind of lives they lead: most of 'em probably never got a chance to make anything of themselves past…this." He gestured toward the bound, injured men around him. "Kill or be killed, do what your criminal boss says or die, follow the law of the streets, not the land…no point, no good reason for living, no way out. You think their parents ever wanted this for them? I don't. If I kill them now, they never get a chance to wake up and have a purpose in life. Maybe they'll have something worth fighting for in their futures, if they're good and lucky. Maybe not. But I'd rather give them that chance than take it away if I can help it."
Mitsune sighed in resignation and chuckled as well. "If you say so, Kei-kun. Dunno if you're even half-right about it, but…as long as you're okay in the end, then more power to ya."
He nodded, a small smile on his face. "Thanks, Kitsu-chan. It means a lot to me to hear that, especially coming from you."
She grinned cheerfully before drawing Keitaro into a tight hug that he willingly returned. It was difficult to do so properly, she noticed immediately; after all, between her own ceramic-plated Kevlar and his hard shelled, full-body bio-armor, there was little room for close contact. Even so, the mere feeling of having him so near to her was deeply comforting, whatever lay between them. Half-unconsciously, she found herself stroking her hands over his armored form in ways that, normally, she might not have gotten away with in public. It felt good, getting moments like this with him; it made her wish that they could get this fighting over with already, and get back to enjoying each other with new freedom.
Perhaps she had forgotten the strange properties of his gear, or perhaps a part of her had willingly overlooked what she instinctually knew; whatever the case, each movement and gesture translated itself with remarkable accuracy and nuance through his armor, allowing him to feel it as though it were his own skin she was touching instead. It wasn't until she noticed the heat rising in his face and the sudden unsteadiness in his knees as her fingers trailed into more intimate and interesting territory that this particular detail came back to her mind.
"Hmmm…looks like that shell of yours really does do more than block bullets, huh?" she noted aloud playfully, eliciting a somewhat strained chuckle from Keitaro.
"Hnnh…n-noticed, did you?" he replied less easily, as though said armor had become more than a little tighter fitting than it had been a moment ago.
She smirked impishly, her innate sense of mischievous humor and flirtatiousness kicking into gear as her mind began to work. "Too bad for you it doesn't work both ways, huh?"
One of his eyebrows quirked up, his own mind suddenly kicking into gear even as the process deepened the blush on his face even further. "You know," he mused aloud, "come to think of it, I...don't see why it shouldn't, really."
Now it was Kitsune's turn to be surprised. She hesitated in her teasing gestures and asked, "What do you mean?"
"Well, the way I figure it," Keitaro said carefully, glancing at one of his palms with interest over her shoulder, "this thing works kinda like an amplified power conduit for my ki, right? You know, kind of like someone hooked a guitar to an amp, and used it to make the sound louder and more complex. Whenever I touch something through this stuff, or it touches me, it's like I'm touching it myself with my own skin, only I can feel the armor part at the same time, too."
She considered it for a moment before saying, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So, it's kind of like not wearing it at the same time as wearing it?" She chuckled and teased, "Ooh, you naughty dog, you!"
"Uhh...well, almost. See, one thing I've noticed is that it doesn't always do that, I mean, at least not for everything. I think…on some level, I have a little control over it."
"How so?"
"Well, it's kind of like...if I want to feel something, I do, but if it's something...painful or distracting, maybe, like getting hit by a bullet or something, the part of it that's hit kind of shuts off for a moment, 'cause I don't want to feel that. And...well, right now, I'm feeling everywhere you're touching twice as strong as everything else I've felt in the last couple hours, and I guess it's because…well…"
"…you want to, right?" she finished for him, smirking.
"…yeah," he nodded, blushing again as she snickered. "Buuuut that makes me think, though: If I can do that to myself, and I can do things like ki healing to others where I normally couldn't…"
Experimentally, he ran a hand down her Kevlar-coated back, his mind refocusing experimentally to show her what he meant.
The sensation caused Mitsune's breath to hitch. At first, she wondered if he'd somehow slipped his gauntlet off and snuck his hand under her clothing; when she realized that she still felt the presence of said clothing and his hand simultaneously in the same spots, however, the words to finish his statement came to her mind and lips in an instant.
"…t-then you can make it work in reverse, too!"
He nodded. "I think it's working. I...hope you don't mind?"
"Mind! Kei-kun, this is brilliant! It's…hmmnh, that feels…really good. C-can you do that with more than just…?"
He could, and the sensation of sudden, phantom bodily contact spread like wildfire. Suddenly, it was like he was with her, inside her layers of armor and clothing even as she wore them, and she inside his as well. She could feel him, not just what was between him and her; she could feel his skin, warm and soft over the layers of still-taught and overworked muscles beneath it, and had enough sense left about her to realize he could feel hers. She could feel every detail down to the irregular surfaces of his scars, even as she felt the material and pressure of their garments separating them. Even as her fingertips felt the the hard, scaly surface that covered everything but his face, she could feel the living surface of his flesh just beneath it.
If she wasn't aware of how closely and intimately they were actually holding each other before, or of how much of an effect it was having on both of them, it was perfectly clear to her now.
"Boy, we could get in a lot of interesting trouble with that thing, you know," she whispered in his ear, and felt his face grew even hotter. Even as he nodded in agreement, though, a deep rumble beneath them threw them off balance. With the loss of contact came the disappointing loss of the sensation, and both snapped back into the reality of their situation.
"I think there's still trouble enough to get into right now as it is," Keitaro muttered aloud a little sadly.
She sighed, frustrated. "Isn't there always? You'd think these guys would know when to quit it already!"
He snorted slightly. "Guess not. But then, I never did either! Come on, we'd better see if we can help. How are we on ammo, anyway?"
Mitsune glanced at the bag on her shoulder, and noted for the first time how much lighter it was now than before. Unzipping it, she peered inside. "Not good; looks like we already used most of it. There's one last clip here for your gun, a whole bunch of empties, too, uh...still pretty good on shotgun shells…aaaand that's about it. I've only got about a clip and a half's worth of shots left in these together," she said, patting one of her holstered Glocks with a sheepish grin. "Think we should go down and get more?"
"Yeah, especially if they still need help at those loading docks Tsuruko was talking about," Keitaro agreed, frowning. "We should anyway, I think. I've got a bad feeling that something's not right, something big. We've all but finished fighting up here for now, but things are still blowing up downstairs in the one-entrance, better defended spot? What's giving them so much trouble?"
Her face fell slightly as she considered it. Sure, they had Keitaro up here, not to mention Haruka and Seta, but they had both Aoyama sisters down there. She had once seen the end results of the two of them going against one another, long before Keitaro had arrived on the scene; the carnage that had resulted was enough to keep half the building contractors in Japan busy for a month afterwards! Even though she'd also seen Keitaro shrug both warriors off quite easily less than an hour ago, she knew damn well that any fighting force containing two such powerhouses together would be difficult to stop in straight combat, especially given the backup of a well-armed private militia like the Guardians. They were fierce, unyielding, and stubborn to a fault; if anything, they should have been done fighting long before now!
"You think there's something down there they can't handle on their own?" she asked.
Keitaro only nodded.
Just then, a Guardians ran up to where Keitaro now stood, and addressed him, "Urashima-san, sir!"
He turned around, looking a little confused. "Huh? What are you calling me sir for? I don't have a rank or anything here, you know. It doesn't sound right."
"Sorry, sir," the fighter apologized, "but you do according to the Commander, effective this morning. I was ordered to find you and have you report directly to her before regrouping to treat the wounded and gather the dead."
"Oh...uh, okay, I guess," Keitaro replied, scratching his own armored neck in an unsure manner. "Uh, just so you know, most of these guys were wounded enemies. I've already done what I could to restrain them and administer a bit of first-aid."
The Guardian nodded. "Understood. That is good news; the fewer that die unaccounted for, the safer we all are," he said.
Mitsune snorted. "How does that make sense? Last I saw, it's the ones that aren't dead yet that we've gotta worry about, right?" she asked rhetorically.
The Guardian, however, was strangely silent. "Um...right?" she asked again, a little less confidently.
A crackling call on the man's radio broke past his silence. "Echo Six, have you found them?" they heard Haruka's voice asking over the airwaves.
The man held a finger to the control near his ear and responded. "Yes, Commander. They will be there shortly. We're in sector 4 at the moment."
"Good. Any more casualties in that sector?"
The Guardian looked around them before answering, "Only wounded that I can see, but I need another minute to be sure."
"Make damn sure, Lieutenant. You know the drill here. Keitaro, I know you can hear me; get your ass over here, and bring Mitsune with you. There's something you both need to know that won't wait."
Together, Keitaro and Mitsune soon found Haruka standing alone by the main elevator, a serious but heavily reserved expression adorning her features as she stood waiting. As they approached her, Mitsune quickly noted that the lift itself was in use, as the complex control panel next to the somewhat scorched entrance indicated that it was now approaching their level from below. Before either could ask about anything, however, Haruka began to fill in the necessary blanks for them as she spoke.
"Because of how little time there is now to fully clarify everything that needs to be said before you continue on, Keitaro," she stated without delay, "I'll start now before Seta gets here with the rest of your equipment. The fight up here is done for now, but not down below; it would seem that most of the forces of the main enemy force's leader, the kingpin Garhem Essade, has focused his main attack on the most accessible point of entry for their forces, namely the loading docks below. Unfortunately, that force includes his own private army of mercenaries...and an entire clan of the Oni."
"What? You mean..." Keitaro asked, surprised.
"The battle up here thus far, Kei, has been against the lesser of his forces," she finished. "The point of it is to prevent our escape, using the forces above to slow and delay any progress we might take to leave while the main force advances at our backs. In essence, he wants us to stay and fight, regardless of the casualties to both sides. In fact...with the oni, having more casualties is more of a disadvantage than you'd think, no matter whose side they are on. The more dead there are, the worse our situation will become."
Mitsune looked at the woman sideways, asking, "What good does it do anyone to have more dead bodies around?"
Haruka sighed, a shadow falling over her expression that made both her younger relative and his girlfriend uneasy. "How much do you know about the oni, Keitaro?" she asked.
Mitsune watched her boyfriend ponder the question a moment, deep in thought. "...not much, I'm afraid," he said finally. "All I know is what Motoko has said of them, that they are some form of...demon, I suppose. I do know she's spent more time practicing her techniques for fighting such creatures on me than she has on her own, though."
Haruka nodded. "That's right. They are indeed a form of demon, a physical manifestation of purified evil. Most of them, however, are very individualistic and powerful, seeking their own ends above all else. Most...but not all. I don't know all the details as well as Tsuruko, but...when oni act as a clan, their purposes change; a single demon may seek power, or destruction, or control over living human beings, but a group exists for one reason alone: propagation. The oni are born from death, and thus death is what an oni clan brings."
"Born from death? What do you mean?" Keitaro asked, but was interrupted. At that moment, a distinctly disturbing sound reached his ears, a combination of a liquid spray and the hiss and crackle of sudden flame. "What the...?"
The sight that greeted his eyes when his head snapped toward the sound was nothing short of horrific.
Not thirty feet away from where they stood in front of the nearest battle-torn tunnel entrance, a pile of corpses had been stacked nearly ten feet high and fifteen wide and across. The sight of them alone was bad enough; ally and enemy alike were piled almost carelessly together like scraps in a pig sty. Just in front of them was a set of very large electric fans, all set to a low speed and pointed toward the open tunnel, their flow directed toward and over the pile itself. Six Guardians lined each side of the pile; one side was spraying the stack with a layer of thick, gelatinous material, coating every inch of the stack that lay exposed to the air. The others were igniting the pile from the other side with military-issue short-range flamethrowers. To his horror, the goo immediately ignited as the flames licked across the mound's surface.
Even with the fans carrying the smoke and flames toward and through the gaping maw of the tunnel ahead, Keitaro could smell the overwhelming and noxious stench of dead, broiling human flesh and the sharp odor of ignited napalm. Next to him, he heard Mitsune gasp in horror; if he hadn't been transfixed by the scene himself, he might have seen her normally almost-shut eyes opening wider than he'd ever seen them.
The impact of the scene on his mind was just as overwhelming.
A pair of hands gently grabbed their shoulders just then, pulling them away from the sickening sight. "You really don't wanna see this one all the way through, kids," they heard Haruka saying to them as she tried to turn them away from it
For perhaps the first time in his life, something snapped in Keitaro that made him lose all sense of control. Faster than Mitsune could see him move, he had turned on his closest nearby relative and all but slammed her up against a wall, holding her a foot off the ground by the front seams of her armored shirt. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS, HARUKA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THEM!" he yelled, eyes blazing with a fury that rivaled that of the intense flames nearby.
Haruka was strangely calm in the face of his sudden rage, as though she had been expecting it. "Listen, Keitaro: this had to be done. You don't understand—"
"YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I DON'T!" he practically growled in response, fury and disgust shaking his arms with every word even as his conscious, sane mind fought every instinct in his body for control. "You can't just burn their bodies like that! Those are human beings, not dead animals! Some of them just fucking DIED for us, and this is what you're doing with their remains! Don't you know what that stuff is! There won't be enough of them left to even tell apart when that stuff is done burning! DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT THEM AT ALL!"
"Yes, dammit, I do! And I hate it as much as you do, BUT WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CHOICE RIGHT NOW! THEY ARE MORE DANGEROUS TO US AS THEY ARE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE!" the older Urashima snapped, her voice laced with her own sense of bitter anger and grief.
As suddenly as Keitaro's anger had come, it began to fade from him. For as long as he had known her, his "aunt" had always kept all but her strongest emotions to herself as much as she could; hearing them seep into her voice with such intensity was enough to jar him from his own, to allow his own mind to reign in the rare and powerful force his temper possessed. Teeth clenched, eyes stinging from the half-ventillated fumes, he asked in a quieter voice, "But…why? Why do this, Haruka?"
"Put me down," Haruka said, struggling to reign in her emotions again, "and I can tell you."
In spite of her own barely-controlled sense of rage and revulsion at the sight before them, Mitsune couldn't help but let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding when Keitaro's grip finally slackened to allow Haruka to slip, gently, back to stable footing on the ground. Keitaro fighting was a sight to behold, she already knew; Keitaro getting angry to the point of losing control was nothing short of terrifying. As Keitaro released his "aunt" and looked away, Mitsune could see a brief and slight tremor pass through Haruka's form; she had never seen the woman lose her composure like that, even for so short a moment.
"I'm…I'm sorry, Haruka, I didn't mean to…" Keitaro began to stammer, the mortification of his own loss of control setting in.
"It's alright, Kei, I undersand," Haruka said to him in a much steadier voice. "I know…I know this looks horrible and it is, but there is a very good reason for it. There are…things…in this battle coming against us that aren't human, do you understand? They are a clan born of death, for their existence is tied to it as surely as ours is tied to life. Every corpse, every fallen man, woman, or child such a clan can get ahold of can and will become one of them."
Keitaro looked at her in horror and sudden dawning. "W-what! But then..."
She nodded. "It takes some time, but it starts with a reanimated corpse. So long as the body is still relatively intact and the head is not detached or destroyed, it will rise at their command. Each becomes like a feral beast, feeding on anything it can get ahold of; eventually, its body will no longer be human, and it will become a demon unto itself. Few demons can recreate their kind, but clans are formed by the ones that can. They are the main reason people like Motoko and her sister—and a lot more of us besides—even exist to fight them: to prevent the formation of such clans, and to wipe out those that do. That's why we must do this...emergency cremation. We cannot afford to be surrounded by such creatures, do you understand? When the tide turns, we must have somewhere to go to escape it."
Keitaro felt sick to his stomach. He wanted to ask if she was joking, but he knew she wasn't. The rancid smell of death and scorching flesh made her words all too serious in his mind. The harsh reality was now becoming all too clear.
"How many, Haruka?" he asked. "How many have already died?"
"At last report, at least a hundred of our own, and perhaps two thousand of theirs. The oni leaders themselves have yet to make their appearance, but it won't be long before they do. Unfortunately...I don't think we have the manpower to repulse that many. Even Tsuruko has her limits, and we couldn't hope to mobilize everyone up here in time to help them. They can't win this one, Keitaro, and we've got to get as many people out of here as possible before the defense fails completely."
Keitaro let out a breath slowly, his shoulders slumping and eyes closing as he did. "...you're right. They can't win this one, not against so many...but I can."
Mitsune's heart nearly did a flip in her chest at his last three words. It was as though all the energy in the very air itself had, for the briefest of moments, surged inward toward him and seeped into his voice, making the three short syllables resonate with sudden power. Was it the sudden shift in the intensity and direction of the flames behind them that caused his eyes to suddenly flash behind the normally unassuming lenses of his spectacles? Or was it the strength that he was now revealing that made them glow, that made the flames resist the artificial winds that stoked them? She couldn't tell, but she felt the difference in his demeanor well up around her like a physical force unto itself.
"Haruka," Keitaro said, his voice resolute in a way it had never been, "I need you to send me down there, alone. I will face them myself, and protect those that yet live. I do not fear such demons of death, but they will fear me."
Haruka's eyebrows went straight up.
"I'll..I'll go with him, too," Mitsune spoke up, to Keitaro's surprise, "so he won't be going without someone to watch his back. No buts, Kei-kun!" She held a finger up to his lips before he could protest. "Even if you can fight the entire planet on your own, I'm not letting you do it that way. Besides, they're my friends too, you know!"
Keitaro hesitated, but finally nodded. He couldn't argue with the same impulses that drove him in another, and didn't want to leave her behind, either. "...alright. But you focus on staying alive, got it?"
She nodded. "Back at ya, Kei-kun. No suicidal heroics, you hear?"
Just then, the elevator behind them opened to reveal its lone occupant. Turning, they saw Seta standing there with the remaining ammunition and useful contents of Locker 42 in a bag of his own.
Everything, that is, except the one that would neither fit nor hope to be held in so small and fragile a container. This final piece stood inverted at his side, its handle reaching past his waist and firmly held standing in his hand.
"Fourth floor: tools, supplies, superweapons!" he declared good-naturedly. "Going down, I take it?"
Keitaro smirked and nodded. "Yeah, soon as we can."
Seta nodded, his expression turning serious. "I think you should take everything here, if you go. You're gonna need it."
"What about you?" Keitaro asked.
"I'm gonna start getting people evacuated. Win or lose, we need to leave this place soon anyway. I take it Haruka's told you what's going to happen?" When Keitaro nodded, he continued, "The last thing we need is to sit still while those bastards overrun the place. Get down there and do what I know you can, Urashima-san: the sooner you do, the more likely everyone is to live through it. Hold nothing back."
"Got it." Keitaro crossed the lift's threshold with Mitsune, accepting the handle of the huge weapon at Seta's side and hefting it effortlessly over one shoulder. Mitsune wasted no time in taking the bag of ammo, pouring it into her own with all haste. As they prepared to descend, Haruka began keying in a unique sequence of numbers in the lift's control pad, one slightly longer than her usual code. Seta joined her at her side as she did.
"One more thing, Kei," he said with a smirk. "Brace yourself for a bumpy ride!" Haruka punched a final button in the sequence, and the lift's large doors all but slammed shut between them.
"What did he mean by thaAAAAAAAAAAH!" Mitsune started to ask before the ground beneath her feet suddenly began to drop like a stone.
Normally, the elevator ride could take at least a minute, the oversized cart programmed to move at a steady, sedate pace for the sake of any passengers and equipment it was carrying. Like most elevators, it was designed with safety features that controlled the rate of descent and halted the car if the cable pulling it broke for any reason by locking it with spring-out hooks engaged by a lack of cable tension.
Unlike most elevators, however, its core programming had an override code that engaged a powerful secondary motor on the lift wheels. This motor could accelerate the descent of the car to speeds that approached full freefall, yet still slow the descent near the end just enough to prevent a full crash.
For Mitsune and Keitaro, this meant the apparent gravity beneath them was less than half of what it normally was for about ten seconds, in which time they felt their hearts crawl up their throats and saw half their lives flashing before their eyes.
When they reached bottom, the apparent G-force swiftly went to about twice the normal level, causing both to lose their footing and stumble to the ground, hard. The giant axe, having slipped from Keitaro's shoulder, embedded itself half an inch into the metal floor next to him.
The doors slid open as swiftly as they had before, revealing a scene of swiftly deteriorating chaos. Amid blaring klaxons and scattering Guardians, a very large and lone oni was wreaking havoc. Though its body was riddled with a number of battle wounds large and small, it charged with berserk glee through the meager lines of defenses it was encountering before it, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. A number of wounded and dead Guardians lined the path it had already taken, and more were still in pursuit.
None, however, had any hope of stopping it, and the vicious spiked mace it carried swept away resistance before it like the edge of a tornado.
Mitsune barely had enough time to think 'HOLY SHIT!' when it spotted and turned toward them, before Keitaro quite suddenly vanished from her side. His sword was drawn before she could blink, and in a lightning series of flashes the entire section of thick walkway between him and the demon flew apart in clean, angled pieces pieces. The armored young kanrinin was upon the demon in an instant, his axe and sword charged with his ki as each swing tore through the startled oni before him. The demon never had a chance to retaliate; the slashes through the walkway had already penetrated the thick fibers of its unholy flesh and kept going, leaving a silhouette of deep gashes in the metal of the floors behind it. Before gravity could pull its now-severed limbs away from each other, the charged blades themselves tore through them again, annihilating them from existence in a brilliant series of flashes.
Keitaro landed on one knee where the oni had stood, his sword and axe pointing like a uneven pair of wings in his outstretched arms. Amazingly, he had entirely avoided hitting the remaining Guardians, who now stood staring with gaping expressions behind visored helmets at him. His suit all but hummed with his energy, and his blades glowed with power. The very air around him seemed to distort with the sudden upsurge of ki around him.
In that instant, Mitsune finally began to understand just how powerful her boyfriend truly was.
The surge slowly died down as he relaxed, taking stock of the situation around him. Mitsune got back to her feet and began to use what was left of the stairs to approach him. As she did, she noticed the corpses in the wake of the oni's path and shuddered. "How the hell did you do that, Kei!" she asked in disbelief as she got near him.
Before he could answer her, she saw him stiffen. Barely milliseconds later, she felt a wave of malevolence sweep past her, not directed at her but no less chilling. "W-what was that?" she asked.
Not far behind Keitaro, a hideous, feral moan and snarl answered her.
When she saw the source of it, she screamed.
They had been winning the fight, Motoko thought to herself, until the last batch of oni had arrived.
Perhaps the heat of battle with so many beings of such great power had driven the key factor of their power from her mind. Had she been standing at the sidelines and observing the fight with enough time to assess the demon's ultimate stratagy, she would have realized that they were just waiting for the right moment. She would have remembered the reason why clans of oni, in the distant past, had participated in human conflicts, even going so far as to fight alongside one side or the other as "allies" for a time. Though she didn't yet know it in her conscious mind, the demon clan's true power had been saved for precisely this moment, when the fallen body count on both sides had begun to outweigh the number of those left standing by far.
Though a number of oni remained, and at least one had slipped past the defenses not long before with a dozen Guardians in pursuit, Motoko remained on the front lines even as her exhaustion grew more pronounced, believing the end to be near. Few human enemies remained standing, and perhaps a dozen and a half oni remained. The Guardians now had them surrounded, and the battle had come to a tense, temporary standoff when the remaining demons suddenly broke off their charge.
She felt, more than she saw, the approach of the final group of oni.
There were ten of them, she saw as they emerged without haste into the bloody arena of the battle. They were gigantic even for their own kind's standards, and were by far the ugliest and most sinister-looking of all. They needed no weapons, it was clear; they were the clan's leaders, the source points of all the other oni that had come to fight that day. They did not join the fight just yet, but grinned the hellish smirks of evil in its element.
All at once, they let forth a howl that would haunt everyone that heard it to their dying days, if they were lucky enough to live that long.
All around them, as though filled to capacity with the malevolence of their roar, dead human corpses twitched in a spasmodic wave, and awoke.
Only then did she remember, and the memory terrified her beyond anything she had ever felt in her life.
Single Oni, single snare; Clan of Oni, crowd beware. For their legions are born by Death, and all are born hungry. Those were the words of the legend she had learned at the feet of the Shinmei-ryu masters long ago, and now they were coming true before her very eyes
One after another, the dead arose. They were human no longer, and living no more, but they stood on the parasitic power of the oni that had taken their remains for their own use. What minds they still possessed were not theirs, but the will of the demonic energies that had begun to consume them.
In the span of seconds, Motoko found herself staring at the feral expressions of more zombies than she could hope to count, and they stared back at her hungrily.
Within seconds, she saw her remaining human opponents being overwhelmed from all sides by their own, fallen comrades-in-arms; the animalistic sounds the undead made as they tore them apart were sickening to her ears.
She thought she saw the leading oni grin as it all happened, for the reanimated corpses were ignoring them entirely.
Almost as one, the zombies turned their attention to the horrified defense, and attacked.
It was all anyone could do to stay alive from that point forward, and the battle went from difficult to desperate. Motoko struck in every direction she could, bringing her remaining energies to bear against the gaping horde that beset them. All too soon, she realized that there would be no winning this battle; there were far too many to kill, and far to few to keep them at bay.
"The Horde is come! Fall back! Fall back!" she barely heard her sister yelling over the fresh din of guttural, animalistic undead moans and growls all around them. "Seal the tunnels when everyone living gets through! Fall back!"
Three main tunnels remained open behind the gates the defense fell back behind; each had been prepared to some degree for a breach in the defense, and had a limited number of extra tricks of their own to assist with it. As the living formed into tight clusters against the press of opponents around them, they retreated toward these tunnels as swiftly as they could. Even as many of the guardians were being torn apart by the ravenous horde, more than half made it past the first set of gates in each of these tunnels before they slammed shut to seal out the oncoming swarm.
Even as Motoko and the others around her finished off the zombies that had made it through with them, she heard the gates rattle with the force of the others coming against it from the other side.
The gates were thick, but not indestructible, Motoko realized; against the combined effors of hundred, if not thousands, of the demon-controlled zombies and the demons themselves, she knew they wouldn't last more than a few minutes at most. All at once, she felt the strain of the entire battle swiftly catch up with her.
Breathing heavily and beginning to stumble from the mounting exhaustion, she took the opportunity to examine the remaining forces around her. Her heart sank as she saw them; though she knew that her sister had most likely made it down a different tunnel, she recognized only one other person among far too few faces. How in the world he had managed to stay alive so long, she couldn't say, but the shorter of her kanrinin's two best friends was there nonetheless. She didn't know where the other was, but figured he was either with a different group, or was dead.
Or…not.
She shuddered violently, no longer unwilling to admit her own fear to herself. She was tired and terrified, and no amount of training and self-discipline would ever hope to change that for her now. She knew what these foes were, what they would become, and how they would become it. She was getting very close to passing out from exhaustion, and the only things between her and a brief, bitter struggle to her own horrific end were a few inches of steel plate and perhaps a dozen other equally tired fighters of questionable skill. The only one besides herself that even had a weapon capable of facing both demon and undead alike had about half an hour of experience under his belt at most and looked equally as terrified as she was, if not more.
She felt as close to admitting defeat as she had ever felt in her life at that moment.
With all of her being, Motoko hated the weakness exhaustion was bringing within her, yet there was little she could do about it now. A small part of her began to wonder at it, though. She had always felt so determined to be strong on her own, so positive that she could do so by her own force of will that she felt she didn't need others to survive. Now, her survival increasingly hinged on how many there were at her side, how long the already groaning and warping metal gates would last, and how much power was left in the strange weapon that—what was his name? Shirai something-or-other?—was using.
It didn't help matters in her mind that they were all males to boot, but the situation was too desperate now for her to even care anymore.
"Son…of a fucking…bastard-whore," she heard him swearing as he caught his breath next to her. "Why did it…have to be…zombies?" To her surprise, she saw him straighten up with a look somewhere between terror and stubborn anger on his round face. "Come on! We've gotta get moving, or we won't make it. I don't know about any of you, I'm not gonna give 'em the satisfaction of giving up without a fight, dammit! We stay here, we're fucked; we find cover to shoot from, and we might have a chance. C'mon!"
It was strange how little pride and honor began to mean to her when it came right down to it. She had to hand it to the punk: he was just as determined as Keitaro in fighting to the end, whether he could really win against the absurd odds or not. She had thought he would've given up long before now, but he hadn't; as contradictory to everything she had ever believed as it was, the short doofus was the only one crazy enough among them to keep moving.
And yet move they did, thanks to that. She didn't know if it would make a difference, but as she struggled to follow suit herself she was at least grateful for that.
The main problem with a shotgun, Haitani was quickly coming to realize, was that there was only so much ammo one could carry for it at once.
Sure, as far as guns went, there was nothing better in close quarters, though the shredding mess of flesh it made at close range made his stomach queasy every time he saw it. He could ignore it for now, of course, since the need to survive kind of outweighed everything else on his mind at the moment, but he would never look at raw hamburger the same way again. But when each shell was the size of (and nearly the same weight as) a roll of large coins, carrying enough ammo for a prolonged firefight like this was like lugging around fifty dollars worth of pennies everywhere.
Granted, it got a lot lighter quick enough, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing, either, especially now that he needed the damn things more than ever.
He hoped Shirai was okay; the last he'd seen of him was just before he'd retreated into one of the base's main corridors, and the heavy iron gate now keeping back a combination of several hundred zombies and some very ugly-assed demons to boot also prevented him from finding out if he'd made it or not. Still, they weren't so bad off yet where he was: there were at least three guys with the same weapon Shirai was using here, not to mention Commander Hot-Assed-Death-On-Two-Legs Tsuruko herself. Hoshiti had gone in a different direction, as far as he knew. Most of the Guardians had made it here as well, about fifty or so all told. Still, a little over half a hundred against what would probably amount to about a third of everyone that had fallen on both sides in all their undead glory (not to mention more of those damned oni smegheads) didn't make for very good odds.
As the remaining forces radioed for what backup there was to be had and reorganized their defensive positions during the respite given by the closed gate, Haitani loaded the last of his shells in his shotgun and frowned. Seven shots and three extra wasn't going to be enough. Before he could decide whether to continue fighting with it or find another dropped weapon instead, a hand grabbed his shoulder from the side to get his attention. To his surprise, it was Tsuruko herself asking him, "You're a friend of Urashima-san, correct?"
Quickly glancing over at the face of the older Aoyama sister, he replied, "Uh, yeah, why do you ask?"
"Good. I need you to go to the safe zone ahead. We may not be able to hold this horde back for much longer once the gates are breached. They will need to be warned and moved deeper into the base. If any there can fight, or if any Guardians remain free to join and assist us, arm them and bring them back if you can, or send them into one of the other tunnels. I see that you are low on ammunition as it is, and this fight would require much more than you have. Go, quickly!"
He didn't need to be told twice. With ten shells left to his name, he was in no position to argue with her, either. He'd be out of ammo and options in a minute if he stayed, and he had a feeling he would want what ammo he had left handy in case something happened along the way. "Alright, I'll be back as soon as I can with whoever and whatever I can find to help."
At the very least, if there was anyone in the safe zone willing to fight, the Toy Box was only fifteen feet away, and he'd be able to grab more ammo while they were there. Maybe he'd grab a few machine guns while he was at it.
He moved as quickly as he could, abandoning the immediate and imminent battle for the time being. With many of the Guardians still slowly retreating to stake out the most defensible positions possible and the gates warping inward not far behind him, he knew he had little time to carry out his task before things got more dangerous and ugly than he cared to think about.
Of course, he didn't miss the fact that the more-than-likely bit of heroics he would need to do, however small overall, would no doubt earn him a brownie point or two with certain individuals within the safe zone itself, especially a few that (according to Keitaro, anyway) might take his head off otherwise. Man, he loved the kind of woman that could kick his ass!
That, of course, was provided they all survived this. There was that little problem: brownie points were worthless to (and for) dead people. Had to focus on staying alive and keeping them alive before he could willingly throw life and limb in deadly peril in the name of love, after all!
When he arrived at the safe zone moments later, he was nearly shot by the half-dozen Guardians guarding the entrance. "Whoa, guys, chill out! Same side." he said quickly, holding his hands up in front of him in as non-threatening a manner as he could manage, causing them to hold off. "That Commander Aoyama lady sent me. They're getting pushed back this way as we speak, and they'll be in deep shit without some heavy artillery for backup! Dunno why, but the demons we were fighting earlier just made zombies out of every dead guy in or out of the damn base, and they're ganging up on all the main drag hallways into this place. They need anyone that can help fight to get down there and start shooting, and they said to get everyone that can't to somewhere further in where it's still relatively safe in the meantime."
Two of the Guardians glanced at each other, somewhat confused by his quick rant, but another simply nodded. "So, it is as we have feared after all. Alright, we shall go and assist," the masked Guardian said with an oddly clipped accent that almost (but just not quite) sounded familiar to Haitani. "There's a few more squads inside standing guard; we'll go help with the fight if you can get everyone else out. The nearest safe zone is through the back entrance, past the armory and down the left hall, on the right."
Haitani nodded. "Alright. I'll come back when everyone's moved, but I'll need more ammo. I'm ten shots shy of empty at the moment," he said, nodding toward the gun on his back.
In seconds, the door of the safe zone slid open, and the same man he had just spoken with (evidently a squad leader of some sort) quickly explained the situation to the others stationed within. Haitani noted with some interest that each member of these reserve squads was rather uniquely equipped; several had somewhat modified uniforms and armor, while most were clearly sporting extra weaponry of every kind. At least three carried large packs loaded with reserve supplies of ammo and equipment, as though they were ready and waiting for a prolonged and difficult fight ahead. 'Then again,' Haitani mused to himself, 'if these guys are supposed to be the backup fighters, that would make sense. Didn't he say they were expecting something like this to happen?'
Whatever the case, the group was ready to go in less than one minute. As the squads filed out, the same squad leader slapped a pair of extra key cards in his hand, saying, "Here, you'll need these; I'm pretty sure you're not on the payroll, right?"
Haitani snorted. "Yeah, something like that. Friend of mine's fighting here, and I figured I could help out a bit."
The Guardian nodded. "Use the yellow one to seal this door before you leave. If something happens and they break through, that'll give you some more time. The red one opens the armory; grab what you can before you leave, and give some of the older ones a weapon if you can, you'll probably be needing it." A somewhat muffled crash of heavy metal not very far off punctuated his statement. "And, although I think she can take care of herself pretty well, make sure my little sister doesn't get herself hurt, would you?"
"Got it, uh, sir! By the way, which one's your—" Haitani began to ask, but the masked squad leader had already run after his men. 'Ooookaaay, never mind, then,' he thought in frustration. How the heck was he supposed to know who the guy was talking about? He turned around, looking at the armored room behind him, hoping to at least take a guess.
Unfortunately for him, there were more possibilities than answers, and the ever-increasing sounds of the battle behind him brought his mind back to the task at hand. Not only were Keitaro's residents and friends here, but quite a few others as well, and they were now depending on him (of all people) to get to safety. "Yo, folks!" he said loudly enough to get everyone's attention. "Hate to break it to ya, but things are gonna get rough pretty damn quick. I need everyone to come with me and get further in the base right now."
At first, it seemed as though things would go smoothly. Whether out of fear of being attacked or a degree of understanding the situation at hand, everyone present seemed willing to get moving when they heard the violence of battle getting louder and closer than ever. Using the yellow card, he unsealed the rear doors of the large room, telling them to start heading out and down the hall as they opened slowly to let them through.
To his chagrin, however, not everyone was moving in the right direction. Most went in the direction of the next safe area as quickly as they could, but not all; before he could stop it, one of the younger girls had flipped and handsprung into what he could only imagine was Snappy the Mechanical Rambo Tortoise. To his surprise, the mechanical beast rose, fearsome arsenal of weapons deployed and ready, and took off through the wrong door in a completely different direction than he had come. "What the—hey, wait!" he yelled, but it was already moving too fast for him to hope to catch now, and a triumphantly grinning and cheering bronze-and-blonde girl was closing the top hatch as it went. "Errgh, dammit…where the hell is she going!" he asked nobody in particular.
"Do not worry," another voice he vaguely recognized told him, its owner gently tugging the sleeve of his bulletproof overshirt to get his attention. Looking back, he immediately recognized Mutsumi, who continued to tell him, "Kaolla-chan will be fine in her Mecha-Tama, she said so herself!"
Making a split decision, he gave one last glance in the runaway mecha's direction before growling in frustration. "I hope you're right; I've gotta seal this door before we leave, and she's off galavanting toward a zombie horde in a metal turtle!"
"Oh, dear…that doesn't sound very good! Perhaps we should…oh!"
And just like that, the woman fainted, nearly taking him down to the ground with her. Fortunately for him, his footing was a bit better than Keitaro's most typically was in just such a situation, and he barely stumbled where his friend might have face-planted into the watermelon-loving girl's own binary patch.
'Crap on a frickin' stick!' he thought to himself as he barely caught the woman's wrist and slowed her descent toward the ground. As he moved to gather the unconscious woman off the ground from behind, he thought, 'One takes off in a reptilian tank, another's passed out on me, what next?'
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HER, YOU PERVERT!"
Inwardly, Haitani groaned to himself. 'Figures. Now I know what Keitaro feels like! How the hell does he stay sane around these chicks!' Still cradling the unconscious woman in one arm with the keycards in his hand and keeping one arm free to use his shotgun, he decided that now was not the best time to follow in his friend's footsteps in dealing with it.
"I'm trying to get her, and you, and everyone else out of here before one of us gets shot, blown up, cut in half, or eaten, Naru!" he managed to halfway yell before she could get close enough to strike. "If you're gonna hit me, save it for later! Right now, she's out like a light and we have to get moving, so give me a hand here, will ya!"
Though Haitani didn't know it, the fact that Naru actually took enough time to actually listen to him was a small miracle in and of itself. In the time it took to do so, she saw the sporadic flashes of light of gunfire bouncing off the metal and concrete walls in the distance, driving home in her mind the fact that he might indeed have a point.
"…Fine, I'll get her feet," she said, and moved to pick up the unconscious Mutsumi's legs off the ground.
When they had just made it through the first security gate and back into the now-empty safe zone, a thought occurred to Naru suddenly remembered something she'd heard earlier and stopped Haitani before he could close it. "Wait! They were treating some wounded guys in the room across the hall! Shouldn't we get them first?"
Haitani hesitated, thinking fast. "Maybe, but I don't think there's enough time…do you think any can still walk? We can't carry everyone ourselves."
"Uh…maybe. Although a few didn't look like they were gonna make it anyway. We could just—"
Haitani stopped dead in his tracks. "Not gonna make it! You mean...oh, fuck!"
As if on cue, the relatively flimsy double doors to the small medical ward not fifteen feet away from them burst open, spewing forth the battle-mangled undead bodies of five former Guardians and four half-eaten medics at once. Quickly tossing the yellow card to Naru, he yelled, "SHUT THE GATES NOW!" and began firing.
As Haitani emptied his weapon into the charging mini-horde, Naru (having seen them for herself) all but ran to the card reader on the wall, swiping the card as fast as she could through it and praying it would work the first time. Immediately, the heavy door slid toward her side of the opening from the opposite end, closing just as one of the zombies was reaching around the corner at her. The metallic barrier slammed on the limb and severed it, but not before its hand had grabbed hold of her hair.
"OW!" she yelled, feeling a chunk of brunette leaving the front of her scalp even as the limb fell lifeless to the ground. Adrenaline still pumping through her system, she felt the spot where the hair had been pulled even as her body stumbled backward and away from the offending limb.
'Shit, now I'm down to three shots and there's already zombies on our heels,' Haitani thought to himself as he checked to make sure both Naru and Mutsumi were okay. Mutsumi was beginning to stir behind him as she regained consciousness. "You okay?" he asked her, and the woman nodded at him as she sat up. When she looked toward the door, however, she gasped.
Naru was sprawled backward, eyes wide in shock and twitching in anger, and looking at a small but significant portion of her hair in the hand of a severed arm on the floor.
Missing from the front of her head was one of the two antenna-like protrusions of her hair.
And then, out of nowhere, her face stilled, and the normally outspoken and emotional young woman became dead quiet.
For some reason, the sudden change in her demeanor scared Haitani worse than the zombies themselves did. Naru, by long-established reputation, was never, ever, that calm.
Deep down, he knew, she wasn't calm at all.
When she demanded, in a steady voice that betrayed nothing in its tone and everything at once, that he give her the card to open the armory, he didn't dare refuse, even though every instinct he had demanded that he run like hell. The only thing that kept him from doing so was the fact that, come what may, he wasn't the target at the moment.
He hoped he wasn't, anyway.
With precision and absolute rigidity that would make a military instructor proud, Naru marched directly to the Toy Box and opened the doors, with both Mutsumi and Haitani following her cautiously at a short but safe distance. Not taking his eyes off of her for a second as she examined the remaining artillery within, Haitani took the opportunity to silently gather more ammo, as much as he could reasonably carry. Naru scanned the room, eyes moving from one implement of destruction to the next.
Quite suddenly, her gaze fixed on a lone point in the room, and her feet propelled her toward it.
When Haitani followed her line of sight with his eyes, he spotted exactly what she was looking at and nearly went to his knees with terrifying realization. He knew what it was all too well. It was a weapon both old and powerful, its very portability stretched to the theoretical limit of possibility. One didn't need to be accurate with such a weapon; with six barrels rotating at high speed to fire rifle-caliber ammunition at the rate of well over a thousand rounds a minute, the handheld GE M134 Minigun simply needed to be pointed in the right general direction.
"This is what we're gonna do, baka," Naru said in that chillingly even tone as she hefted the weapon with unnatural ease, the tiny trickle of blood from where her hair had been pulled tracing a series of thin red lines like ancient war paint down her forehead. "I'm going to use this thing on those undead bastard fucks, and you're going to push this ammo cart and cover my back while I'm doing it. Mutsumi, you're gonna stay awake long enough to get to that other safe zone, and you're gonna stay there and watch over everyone else for me. Got it?"
Swallowing hard, both Haitani and Mutsumi uttered, "Yes, ma'am."
A.N.: Man, this chapter was a bitch to write, but well worth it. This is, currently, its fifth incarnation since I started it, and while the basic structural format of where I wanted to go with it stayed practically the same from the outset, the manner in which I went about it (the nature and scope of the battles, and the point to which I would write in them in one chapter) changed repeatedly and dramatically. I've rewritten basically every part of it two to four times apiece, chunk by chunk, even AFTER uploading it to FFN for "final" edition. Basically, I didn't write it so much as let it evolve as I needed and wanted it to. The good news, though, is that while this chapter is slightly shorter than I had originally planned on, the raw material for the next chapter is already halfway complete, so maybe I'll be able to update a little faster with Chapter 15 than I did with this one.
I mentioned that an abnormally large number of things were referenced in this chapter in the disclaimer, and there were. The title (which, up until the very last revision, was going to be a line from a special, namely "Always Have A Zombie Plan") refers to the character Rasheed from the Cowboy Bebop movie, which I also (again) shamelessly referred to with a line in Haitani's thought process in the chapter itself. Props to those that can find it; I did it more as a tribute to Steve Blum than anything, who ironically voices both Spike Spiegel and Masayuki Haitani. (Incidentally, the old woman at the beginning of the same movie is voiced by the same person that voices Mitsune Konno; meanwhile, Keitaro is voiced by Derek Stephen Prince, the same guy that voiced the brothers Shin and Lin later in the Bebop series, and Wendy Lee, the voice behind Faye Valentine, did the dub for Kaolla Su, of all characters. Meanwhile, Kanako Urashima, Keitaro's adopted little sister, is voiced by Melissa Fahn, who voiced Bebop's hacker girl Edward. Go figure!) Other inspirations came from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (the part where Sephiroth is "sparring" with Genesis and Angeal on the simulated Mako Cannon, and he in particular goes on the offensive), Resident Evil, Onimusha, Predator…the list goes on from there, but I can't think of everything off the top of my head at the moment, and some others technically will refer to parts of the next chapter that were going to be in this one. Sorry, had to cut it somewhere; it was beginning to get a bit unwieldy to do everything in one fell swoop. Aside from that, I seriously enjoyed writing (primarily) from Haitani's perspective, however briefly. I always try to crawl inside the heads of each character I write, and his was more fun than I had expected it to be.
Next chapter: the defenders get a much-needed boost as three individuals enter the fray at full power against the hordes of hungry demon-possessed corpses. Expect heavy carnage, numerous random flying body parts, and a 100% chance of severe epic-ness in action, in that approximate order. If I'm lucky, we'll see a bit more of at least one...no make it two...of the other major villains in play as well. Plus, I FINALLY will get to begin to show where I came up with the name for this fic in the first place.