Hey-hey! It's a chapter and less than a month since I last updated!
Chapter nineteen;
Shinko ran down the stairs to find herself in a scene of chaos. Low tables upended into a mess of cards and dice and almost two dozen people were crouched to attack, their attention focussed on the boys standing at the other end of the room one figure more familiar than her own face, the other instantly identifiable by his shock of red hair. Three people were standing by the other door, and let out a shout when they heard her barrelling down.
Shinya let out a whoop as he caught sight of her, almost letting someone slice his ear off as he dodged past them, grinning.
"Careful!" Shinko shouted, skidding into two of the guards, ducking under the kunai they held in each hand as she dug the shoulder and elbow of her good arm into their stomachs, using her momentum to twist herself around behind them and unsheathing her blade from her waistband and cracking it into their shoulders. The third guard came round, swinging a katana at her head. She blocked it, using her hand to support the end of the blade and her injured arm's grip. She twisted her blade, maintaining contact with the other sword and pushing its sharp edge away from her body as she rammed the point into his shoulder. He stumbled back, and Shinko turned her focus back to the first two guards, knocking them on their heads with the heavy hilt of her 'decorative' katana as the third guard recovered, pulling out a long wakizashi with his other hand, his right arm limp and hanging too low down his leg. Shinko frowned in consternation as the two guards behind her – one an almost kindly looking, middle-aged lady she noticed as her mind caught up with her body – fell unconscious to the tatami floor. The man with the wakizashi lunged as some of the other guards began to detach from the group around Kenji and Shinya to circle around her.
"Imoto!" Shinko winced as she heard Shinya's voice, the warning causing her to jerk back as a blade whizzed by her chest – it was the man with the wakizashi, the mirrored movements of his left-handed attack throwing her reactions off by a near fatal fraction. Another guard attacked from her flank, and she blocked again, before swinging her blade into the guard's ribcage, then flicking it into the guard with the wakizashi's shoulder. She ducked forwards again as more blades, wakizashi, kunai, kodachi, katana, and other, stranger weapons, glittered into the air weaving in a complex cage that didn't follow any single pattern. She twisted, her hilt thudding into one guard's stomach as she turned her blade in a heavy cut that would have sliced another guard in half if her blade had been sharp.
Another blade, heavier, curved, sliced through her sleeve, leaving it hanging off her bandaged arm, and she heard Shinya shout in pain or shock, feeling her stomach clench at the sound. Kenji was silent, his bokken cracking down against the shoulder of the man who injured Shinya. The wooden blade shattered, in a puff of splinters.
Shinya, blood already beginning to drip from a shallow cut across his chest, jumped in front of Kenji as the older boy ducked into a defensive stance, searching the ground for a weapon that approximated a katana closely enough to be of use. The dark-haired boy parried a heavy swing, wincing as a heavy, curved blade, wielded by a young woman sliced almost the entire way through his bokken.
"Catch!" A male voice calls from the other end of the room as a gleaming blade twirls through the air, thudding into the wall beside Kenji, who grabbed it, grimacing slightly at the weight, before turning back to the fight, covering Shinya as he located the nearest fighter with a katana, having been unable to find one on the floor.
Shinko heard Kiyoshi's shout and risked a glance behind her to see the young man standing behind her, holding a thin, segmented staff and standing at the door with a look of distaste as he maintained a defensive stance.
The hiss of a projectile drew her attention back, making her duck away as one of the people standing further back threw a shuriken at her head, grazing her cheek, a near impossible shot in the confusion – even Misao would have had difficulty.
Two of the fighters stopped, at the sound of Kiyoshi's shout. A young woman a few years older than Kenji and a middle-age man pulled away, the girl pausing mid-swing as she attacked Kenji with a staff tipped with a half-moon blade on each end. They both fell back to stand by Kiyoshi confusion on their faces.
"Kano-san?" The girl asked, twirling her staff in loose loops to defend the both of them from the occasional stray missile.
"The boys look 'useful', don't they, Nanako-chan, Itsuki-san?" Kiyoshi suggested, and the middle-aged man chuckled. The three of them stayed separate from the fray, watching.
Kenji had disarmed the guard with the katana, and slid the blade to Shinya. Now both boys were armed with sharp blades, glittering in the lamplight. A woman screamed as Kenji sliced the muscles in her arm – Shinko winced in sympathy, her own arm twinging – but Shinya was holding back, the training from Kenshin, Yahiko, and even Kaoru making him hesitate.
Shinko brought her blade down on the back of the head of a fighter who was taking advantage of Shinya's hesitation to try to chop his head off. The strength of the blow sent pain up her arm, followed by a flood of damp warmth
"Domo," Shinya muttered, twisting his blade to a more awkward angle so that he could use the flat, before joining the fight in earnest, as Kenji stabbed a man who was attacking Shinko savagely through the shoulder.
*break*
Masaru heard the shouting increase in volume as he stuffed a sheaf of papers into a satchel at his waist, before moving down the stairs, hands at his weapons.
"Konbanwa," a polite, effeminate man stepped out of the way at the bottom of the stairs, letting Masaru see the tightly packed mass of bodies, almost half of whom were already unconscious, or had staggered back, clutching broken bones or shallow gashes.
Pulling out the kodachi that Aoshi-sama had taught him to use, Masaru darted forwards, attacking from behind. Kenji grunted in pain as a heavy mace-like weapon glanced off his hip, the wall at the back hedging him in as he blocked another attack to his face.
Shinko ducked round Shinya with a snarl, attacking Kenji's assailants ferociously. The red-haired boy stumbled back against the wall, off-balance as he leaned heavily on his right leg.
Shinya hissed as a spear grazed his shoulder, and heard Shinko let out a half-sob of pain as she barely parried a hack at her own shoulder from a two-handed blade, the impact jarring down her arm and sending a fresh wave of blood down her forearm. The handle, slippery with the blood oozing from her arm slid away from her grip, deflecting the huge blade in a glancing blow along her thigh. Kenji pushed her back, and with a savage growl, stabbed the man with the two-handed sword. He fell back, blood streaming from his chest, as Kenji stumbled, his left leg giving out under him.
Behind them, Masaru was cutting through the remainder of the guards, leaving them injured but not dead. He reached the three swordfighters just as Shinya managed to knock away a blade that was about to descend on Kenji as he tried to stand up on his damaged hip. Shinko, blood running down her arm and leg, managed to pull away from the wall, blocking the blade of the last guard, a tall, slender female, as Masaru knocked his hilt against the base of her neck.
Shinya meanwhile had finished off the other one, leaving the room full of groaning or unconscious bodies, as the big man with the two-handed sword convulsed around the hole in his chest, blood spraying between his lips as he coughed. Masaru turned and with one neat motion, cut the guards head off.
"What did you –" Shinko started, dropping onto the ground and gripping her thigh.
"He was dead," Masaru shrugged, wiping his blades and tossing several rolls of bandages at Shinya. "Bandage them up." He said before turning to Kiyoshi and the only other two people left standing. Itsuko had a curved knife held against each forearm, and Nanako still held her staff.
"Will you believe me if I say we don't want to fight?" Kiyoshi asked, resting a hand on the shoulders of each of his henchmen.
"I might, but I wouldn't believe you if you said we should let you go, unless you gave me some very good reasons." Masaru said, holding his blades ready.
"I am Tanuki-sama's most useful agents in Osaka?" Kiyoshi suggested, shrugging.
"He helped me." Shinko added through gritted teeth as Shinya tightened the bandage around her thigh. Her lower lip was gripped tightly between her teeth, but she wasn't looking at any of the people standing around her, or even Kenji, who was sitting beside her, his fingers gingerly probing his thigh. Her eyes were fixed on the head of the dead guard.
"He wasn't being very helpful when we were fighting for our lives." Kenji growled, one of his hands hovering just above Shinko's shoulder.
"If I did fight, then I wouldn't be able to go back to Osaka. This way, I can say that I didn't want to risk my friends and lieutenants lives in a battle that occurred due to Toranaga-sama's incompetence." Nanako wrinkled her nose at the honorific Kiyoshi chose for the wiry man with his shabby western clothes.
"You're proposing acting as a counter-agent?" Masaru demanded, still holding his blades up.
"You need one... You need several in fact." Kiyoshi said, shrugging again.
"The Oniwabashu-"
"-is falling apart. Otherwise Tanuki-sama would have been crushed already."
"Why don't you trust him, Masaru-san?" Shinko asked, looking up from the body as Shinya began stauncing the injuries on his chest and shoulder, after determining that he could do nothing for Kenji's leg.
"You trusted 'Natsuko'." Masaru said. He'd found a report written by what could only have been the pretty girl on Toranaga's desk.
"Can we sort this out later? I think that something's broken, or at least dislocated in Kenji's hip."
"Let Kiyoshi-san help." Itsuki suggested, slipping his blades into his sheaths, apparently satisfied that hostilities were no longer imminent.
"He's trained as a doctor." Shinko added, turning to check on Kenji, her dark brows drawing down into a frown.
"This is idiocy. How can you be so naive?"
"We need to go! We all know that Natsuko is – we need to go make sure that she doesn't try anything." Shinya gripped the katana he'd acquired more tightly, his jaw set.
"We need to deal with these." Masaru snapped, jerking his head around the room.
"Here, chloroform," Kiyoshi held up a tightly sealed metal flask. "Throw it in after you and they'll all be knocked out. Most probably won't remember what happened properly either."
"...Fine. Shinya, help Kenji. Shinko, can you walk? You three, go in front." Masaru barked out directions, taking the flask from Kiyoshi and pushing them out. He waited as the group limped downstairs, Kiyoshi helping Shinko, before he unsealed the lid of the flask and throwing it in, before leaving as well. The fine liquid splashed out of the bottle, fumes beginning to drift from the puddles to fill the room as Masaru slid the door shut.
*break*
Should be back to the Aoi-ya soon.
*break*