“Kevin-sama, I will clear a path for you. When I do, I want you to drive away from this place and not look back.”
Kevin stared at her. His expressive blue eyes were an open book. She could see every flash and flicker of emotion he had; worry for her, concern about Kiara, desire to protect those around him, and, most notably, determination to do what needed to be done.
“Okay.” He didn’t question her decision. He merely accepted it. “I’ll do what you say, but only if you promise to come find us when you finish doing whatever you plan on doing here.”
“Ufufufu.” Kotohime raised her left hand and used it to hide the demure curve she felt tugging at her lips. “Of course, Kevin-sama. You have my word that I shall return to you and the others.”
Kevin nodded. “I’ll hold you to your word.” He paused. “Where should we go?”
“Travel to the distribution center that you work at,” Kotohime ordered. “Given the situation, I am certain that Monstrang-dono is already there, but if he is not, then wait for either him or myself to arrive.”
“Right. We’ll do that.”
Kotohime smiled at the young man, so calm, so poised. It was hard to believe that this was the same child who’d been so indecisive when they had first met.
“In that case, I shall see you all later.”
“W-wait!”
Kotohime, her hand still on the door, turned her head to look at Lilian, whose green eyes quivered with worry. Worry for her.
“B-be safe, okay?” Lilian’s lips trembled. “Don’t… don’t do anything reckless, and make sure you come back to me. To us.”
Kotohime ignored the moisture gathering in her eyes and gave her charge the brightest, most lustrous smile she could manage. “Of course, Lilian-sama. This humble Kotohime shall always return to your side.”
Lilian gave her a tremulous smile. Kotohime took a few moments to cherish that smile, to cherish this moment, to cherish the girl who was like the daughter she never had.
Then she left, exiting the vehicle, walking into the chaotic throng of panicked humans. She left her family behind.
And stared down the machine whose head suddenly swiveled to look at her, its visor glowing a baleful red.
***
Heather knew she was out of her league once the battle between Kiara and that strange machine really started. Heck, if it wasn't for Kiara and her immense physical strength, she would have still been buried underneath who knew how many tons of rubble. Kiara was the one who had kept her from being crushed when the ceiling collapsed. She was also the one who destroyed the rubble and allowed her to escape.
And now she was the one who was battling against an unknown foe while she just stood there.
She had known, in her heart, that Kiara wasn’t human, that she was an existence beyond Heather’s understanding. An entity of power. A yōkai. However, just what that meant had never truly occurred to her until this moment.
Kiara’s face was a beastly snarl as she slammed into the silver machine. Her clawed hand raked across its chest, red flames of youki leaping from her nails to slice into its body, sending splatters of silvery “blood” careening to the floor. Yet the machine doggedly hung on. Its hands morphed into blades, the metal turning liquid and then shifting, elongating and thinning out, curving into a point. It attacked with vicious swipes that the inu was quick to either block or dodge. Her red energy seemed to protect her, keeping the machine’s blade-like hands from cutting into her flesh.
Heather had faced down many yōkai before. Having worked for The Sons and Daughters of Humanity, she had plenty of experience fighting against yōkai, but they had all been weak. Pathetic. Baby fish swimming in a gigantic ocean.
Kiara had power. Real power. Frightening power.
The machine attacked again. Its hand elongated into a spear, which it thrust at the inu, who merely knocked it over her shoulder by raising a hand and smacking its underside. She then closed the distance, moving in swiftly, entering its guard and digging her nails into the machine’s strangely rippling flesh. Red energy pulsed along her arm before bursting out of the machine’s back. The creature was sent flying backwards, smashing into a mostly destroyed wall, causing the rest of it to crumble like a house of cards.
Kiara grit her teeth. Dark eyes blazing underneath her wild hair, making her seem more like a demon of old than a simple yōkai.
“Damn this thing! Look at my house! It’s ruined!”
Heather surveyed the condo and had to agree. Walls had been reduced to rubble. The ceiling was no more. The entire second floor had disappeared within a blaze of explosive glory. What few pieces of the condo remained were half destroyed, burnt down, and crumbling. Much of the furniture had been decimated as well. The couch blackened, with ash falling off its frame. The table shattered, mere splinters that were no better than kindling. Her TV, all 142 inches of it, nothing but a sparking mess. Don’t even get her started on the expensive gaming system with its surround sound, virtual reality headsets, and everything else.
“It does look pretty bad,” Heather said out loud.
Kiara scowled at her. “Pretty bad? No, pretty bad is, ‘crap, the fridge is broken.’ It’s ‘why the hell isn’t my A/C working?’ This—” she gestured to the demolished remains of her home “— is a fucking disaster. Someone has to pay for it. And I know just who that someone is going to be.”
Heather watched as Kiara leapt into the air and crashed into the silver machine just as it was entering her condo again. Both yōkai and robot went flying out of the condo, and Heather almost absentmindedly listened to the loud series of explosions that proceeded to follow their exit.
“Well,” she started, “that just happened.” She looked around. “And now I have no clue what I’m supposed to do.”
***
Killing intent. As the name implies, killing intent is nothing more or less than a person exuding his or her pure intention to kill. It can cause a variety of effects and reactions from the people who are doused with it; general feelings of fear, temporary paralysis caused by terror, losing control over one’s bowels. Some yōkai can create a killing intent so strong that people around them actually see visions of their own death.
Kotohime didn’t use killing intent very often. Unless the situation required it, she would rather let her sword do the talking.
Such was not the case now.
Now, she used her killing intent to the fullest.
The area around her had become saturated with her intent to kill. There was no bloodlust inherent in this intent. There was no rage either. It was a cold feeling, a methodical feeling, like the intent was merely stating a fact, a statement about the inevitability of death. “I am going to kill you,” was what it said to the people who felt it.
Those people ran away screaming in abject fear, in terror. They had already been frightened by everything that was going on around them. The killing intent was merely released to give them that final push they needed to leave. This place was about to become a battlefield, and Kotohime did not want any of the humans getting caught in the crossfire.
She and her soon-to-be opponent gazed at each other. Dark eyes locked onto a red, T-shaped visor. Kotohime was not well versed in mechanics, but even she couldn’t help but marvel at the ingenuity it must have taken to craft something like this.
To build something so dangerous… Truly, human beings are a dangerous species.
Neither of them moved. She remained where she was, as did the machine before her. She wondered what it was thinking. What sort of thoughts went through a mind composed of steel and circuits?
Out of her peripheral, she saw Kevin’s car reverse, swerve, and then shoot down the street like a kitsune chasing after their mate. She smiled, pleased to see that Kevin had listened to her.
The machine tried to follow.
“Oh no you don’t.”
She appeared before the machine in a flicker of speed. Her blade lashed out, a mere glimmer, a silver crescent that flashed
into existence and then faded away a split second later. It avoided her attack, jumping backwards more quickly than she had assumed it was capable of doing. It mattered not. Her objective had been met.
“You will not follow Kevin-sama and Lilian-sama.”
She slid her feet apart ever so slightly. Her katana was back in its sheath and held near her waist, the hilt being caressed by her left hand. Meanwhile, her right hand fiercely gripped its sheath as she assumed a traditional battōjutsu stance.
Dark eyes narrowed in a fierce expression of determination.
“Your opponent tonight is this humble swordswoman.”
The machine remained still for a moment, its visor glowing malevolently in the dark night.
And then it charged at her, and Kotohime met its charge head on.
The sound of clashing steel rang out loudly that night.
***
Rage. Hatred. Malice. Bloodlust. These emotions were a fundamental part of all inu. They gave an inu their strength, their drive, their desire for blood and battle and death and glory. An orgy of destruction, that was what these emotions represented.
Kiara hated these emotions. What good was rage when there was nothing to rage at? What good was hatred when there was nothing to hate? What did malice ever give her that she could not get with her own two hands and some hard work? Bloodlust? Ha! Bloodlust did not build empires. Bloodlust had not been responsible for the construction of her fitness centers. That had been all her. Everything she had accomplished had been done by her, with her own hands—hand—without touching the negative emotions that inu like her brother and father so cherished.
Rage. Hatred. Malice. Bloodlust. These were emotions she despised with all her being.
And yet it was these very emotions that she felt as she fought against the machine who’d torn apart her dwelling.
With a roar that sounded like the ferocious, terror-inducing howls of an enraged beast, she launched herself at the robot that had dared to destroy her condo. It dodged her, avoiding her enraged swipes and the youki-induced waves of power that leapt from her hands. Chunks of road were reduced to rubble. Pavement became packed with craters. The surrounding wildlife was decimated by her uncontrolled energy. Yet the thing she wanted to kill the most was unharmed.
That just made her angrier.
Several beams of light were launched from holes that opened in the machine’s fingertips. Kiara had learned that these were not simply beams of luminous energy, but high-intensity lasers. The beams of light hurt. They burned. What’s more, they ignored her youki energy barrier, bypassing her natural shield as if it wasn’t even there.
Kiara had already been hit by these several times, and she had no desire to get struck by them again. She leapt backwards, her powerful leg muscles bunching as she crossed a distance of four yards in a single leap. The machine tried tracking her, and its beams would fire periodically, but none of them hit. The ground before her detonated in a blaze of light particles and heat, leaving behind melted blacktop that bubbled and hissed.
Having never been the kind of person to take fire without returning it, Kiara decided it was time for some payback. Power gathered in the palm of her hand. Dark red energy, luminous and radiant, roaring like a flame, burst into existence. She did not hesitate to launch this energy at her foe. She swiped at the air with her claws, sending blast after blast of powerful energy waves.
The machine dodged them. It wove through the air, juking and jinking like a jet fighter. Her attacks passed it by on all sides, raging all around it but never hitting it.
Kiara snarled. “Gods forsaken machine! Get down here so I can crush you!”
She lashed out again, a giant claw shooting out from her hand. The claw extended to the machine. When it closed the distance, Kiara clenched her hand into a fist, the claw following suit, massive red fingers closing around the machine in an attempt to crush it. Her adversary proved to be slippery, however, for it easily flew between her fingers.
Frustration set in.
Perhaps the machine had been waiting for her to lose her cool. Maybe it had some ability to sense her state of mind. Whatever the case may have been, the machine chose the moment she stopped thinking clearly to attack—the moment when she was the least prepared.
It slipped from her claw’s grasp yet again, not by traveling up, but this time by going down. Thrusters that once held it aloft ceased and it dropped to the ground like a stone. Just before it hit the road, its thrusters flared once more, and it flew straight at Kiara with the obvious intention of ramming her.
Or so Kiara thought.
When a large beam of white light blasted out of its head, Kiara barely had time to think before it struck her full on.
Kiara’s world became engulfed in white light.
***
A flash of steel. A furious assault. A dance of certain death.
Kotohime moved with the grace of a dancer and the power of a whirlwind. Her muscles, enhanced to the point where she could feel her body straining against her own power, pushed her ever forward. She moved more swiftly. Her strikes were more deadly. She packed more punch.
The machine kept up with her.
It has been improved upon.
Kotohime studied her opponent through narrowed eyes. The machine she fought wielded two blades as if they were a part of it.
A seamless transition from arm to sword, the metal that composed the machine had the ability to shape itself into any form. A hand. A claw. A sword. At any given time, its arms—its entire body even—could change into whatever it wanted.
This was not new to Kotohime. She had faced this machine’s predecessor, and it, too, had this strange ability. However, the difference between the machine she had first defeated and this one was like night and day.
Kotohime backpedaled as the machine’s feet suddenly shifted into a pair of blades, adding four to the two that she had already been defending against. Its movements became more erratic, the angles at which it tried to attack her changing from straightforward maneuvers to wildly reckless swings that came in from all sides. She tried to defend as best she could, wielding her sword with all the skills afforded to her, but she was being beaten back. One blade, no matter how skilled its wielder was, could not contend with four blades at once.
In a battle of swords, she was at a disadvantage.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t use any of her sword techniques. She had tried to, but every time she gathered the youki necessary, the machine attacked her with increased intensity, like it knew she was trying to deliver a killing blow.
The sword techniques in her arsenal were abilities of her own creation. They utilized a combination of the kitsune enhancement technique, kenjutsu, and battoujutsu. It relied on precisely timed bursts of youki, enhancing her muscles to beyond what even most kitsune could do, and then launching traditional kenjutsu and battoujutsu techniques in conjunction with each burst of youki. It was these techniques that had made her so infamous back when she’d been an adopted member of the Ślina Clan.
I need to gain some distance…
Kotohime had already tried illusions, but they didn’t work on her opponent, probably because it was a machine. It didn’t have a brain for her to affect with youki, so she couldn’t alter its world-based perceptions. Perhaps that was the reason it had been built. Without a brain that could be affected by yōkai powers, it could fight without fear of a yōkai trying to subvert its thoughts and consciousness.
Her body glistening with sweat, Kotohime blocked several lightning quick strikes, then leapt into the air. Ten feet. Twenty feet. Fifty feet. Gathering moisture beneath her feet, Kotohime created a solid platform of water, which she hardened with youki and used to continue ascending far into the sky. Glancing down, she saw the machine following her, quickly soaring to catch up.
I’ll only have one shot at this…
Mentally steadying herself, Kotohime got to work.
“Kitsune Art: Blade Extension.”
Water g
athered along her katana. The light blue substance, constrained by her yōkai, was quickly compressed along her blade, hardening and lengthening, extending her reach and increasing her katana’s cutting power. Light blue soon became a dark cerulean as more water was condensed along her sword. When she deemed it enough, she started phase two of her newest technique.
She began to spin. Faster and faster she spun. Like a tornado. Her movements never ceased; she never stopped spinning. Her body became a blur of motion.
It was this blur that the machine ran into.
“Sword Art: Dance of the Whirlpool.”
Much like its predecessor, the machine she was fighting appeared to be made entirely of liquid metal. What made this one different from its counterpart, aside from its increased abilities, was how it could harden its body. Kotohime did not know how this worked, but that hardly mattered. What mattered was what she had learned. In order to actually deal damage to this machine, she needed an attack that not even its highly defensive body could withstand.
Metal squealed as her blade tore the machine apart. Liquid silver rained upon the earth. Kotohime continued to spin, continued slicing into the machine like the Tasmanian Devil. It didn’t take long before there was nothing left for her to slice. The machine was no more, and its remains were splattered along the ground.
Landing lightly on her feet, Kotohime surveyed the battleground. Due to the nature of their battle, there wasn’t much cosmetic damage. The road was covered in silver, but aside from the mercuric substance and a few slash marks, no one would have been able to tell that this place had been a battlefield just seconds ago.
She was about to walk away when she stopped. She turned around and frowned.
The silvery liquid was moving, crawling along the ground, each small puddle slowly moving towards the other puddles. They gathered in the center, merging together and reforming. Legs first, then the hips, followed swiftly by the torso. Arms jutted out from either side of its newly formed shoulders, and a head quickly grew up from the neck. It gathered around a strangely glowing sphere. What was that? Its core?
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