Bushido Online_Friends and Foes

by Nikita Thorn

  Chapter 10

  The reception room was spacious and bright, but now Seiki felt as if all the air had been sucked out of it, and the silence was so heavy that he could feel it gripping his skin.

  His mind raced frantically but could not come up with any other conclusion. Sayahime did not seem at all surprised at the revelation about Susumu, and neither did Ozuru. But still, Seiki stared at them, hoping that they would deny it.

  “Hime-sama?” said Hiro, uncertainly.

  Before anyone could say anything, Katsumi shouted from the doorway, “She invited.” She seemed horrified, and Isao gave a start.

  “What?” cried Susumu. “What do you mean she invited?”

  “Kill her now!” Ozuru said.

  Akari was still laughing. “And now you’re going to kill me?” She had on a strange kind of smirk. “Now that your act’s been blown? Now that the victim realizes what just happened?”

  Seiki’s chest tightened. Nothing made sense, but then everything made sense now. They were all in on it. It had all been one elaborate act, and he had no idea what for, and why they were doing this to him. All of a sudden, he felt as if he had been thrown naked out in front of a hungry, screaming audience.

  Around him, everything was happening at once. Isao dashed forward from the doorway with his bared sword, and Seiki soon had a dead houshi girl behind him.

  “Teruo,” said someone. “Only one.”

  “He’s one of them, isn’t he?”

  “What’s going on?” asked Susumu.

  Rapid footsteps sounded, as well as panicked shouts, but Seiki could no longer understand them.

  A man ran into the room. “We’ve found him!” They were dragging someone down the corridor, whom Seiki recognized as Teruo—the ninja from the vegetable shop. The man now had blood all over his clothes and a deep gash across his right arm. He appeared to be hanging on to a meager amount of health.

  “Who are you?” asked Ozuru. “What are you after?”

  Teruo spat on the floor.

  “We found him in the upper storage, but nothing is missing, Ozuru-sama.” Someone shouted a report from the waiting room, which was getting rather crowded.

  “What did you do?” said Ozuru. “We paid you!”

  Teruo looked up at the ninja. “Well, apparently someone paid me much better than you did, Ozuru-sama,” he said, mockingly.

  Ozuru raised his hand, and the next second Teruo fell onto the flooring with a soft thud.

  “Is that all of them?” someone asked from the waiting room.

  “Yes. Only two,” said Katsumi.

  Seiki could only stare at him. Somehow, they seemed perfectly convincing, but then they had been convincing all this time.

  Ozuru appeared to be troubled. “Loot him,” said the ninja.

  Someone bent down to loot the ninja, and the body dispersed. “Nothing. He didn’t take anything.”

  Another clan member ran over and dispersed Akari’s body. Seiki could almost feel the death smoke on his skin. “Nothing here either. Absolutely nothing on her,” said the man.

  The room was in panic. Seiki could not tell anymore which part was staged and which part was genuine, but it did not matter. This was all a lie. They had set him up, not once, but twice, and all perhaps to see what he would do. Everything had been carefully engineered. For a moment, they really had him believing that there was something here for him, and he even thought he wanted it. But all that had been engineered too. Ultimately, all they wanted was a show.

  Seiki picked himself up from the floor.

  All anyone ever wanted was a show. People paid. People always paid to see him bleed.

  Katsumi had noticed. “Seiki?” she said. “You all right?”

  Seiki felt his hands trembling. Then, they took this tone with him, after they were done, and they told him things would be all right.

  Something in his mind started screaming, like the voices of a thousand spectators. “I don’t know what sick game you people are playing,” Seiki said.

  Hiro was still staring at the scene, before turning his bewildered gaze toward Sayahime, who sighed and said softly, “Sit down, Hiro.”

  Seiki glanced at her, and her expression still betrayed nothing, not even a single sign of acknowledgement or remorse.

  Katsumi took a small step forward. “Listen, Seiki,” she said.

  “Stay back,” said Seiki.

  Katsumi took another step forward, and Seiki drew his Hikari. “Stay back!” There was no use reasoning with him now. He was done with their game.

  “Whoa,” said Isao.

  “You lied to me,” said Seiki. “This was an act. The whole thing. The whole intrusion thing.”

  “Please put the sword down, Seiki,” said Ozuru. “We can talk about this.”

  “It’s not what you think,” said Katsumi.

  No one was even denying it. No one was saying it had been a misunderstanding.

  “I want to leave,” Seiki said. Blood was pounding in his ears, and something inside him was yelling angry, unintelligible words.

  Ozuru grimaced. “The situation has changed, Seiki. We now need to ask you some questions about these intruders, since we no longer know who they are.” He sighed. “Please, put down the sword.”

  Seiki felt sick and he tried to force air down his lungs to calm himself. His heart was beating as if it was about to leap off his chest. When Ozuru took a step toward him, he felt like a cornered animal with a group of hunters closing in.

  “Seiki,” said Ozuru again, softly. But then Seiki noticed the man’s hand slowly reaching for his secondary dagger. Of course, he thought, Disarm him and take away his ability to fend for himself.

  That was all he needed to see.

  Seiki charged forward with his Slide, and shot past Ozuru before the ninja’s weapon could leave its sheath. Aiming low, his Sweeping Blade caught four people standing by the doorway on their legs, and they fell back onto the clan members behind them. Surprised cries went up, and Seiki felt a hand trying to grab him from behind. But he had already mapped out his second Slide and he broke free as he let loose, his left-handed energy-less Sweeping Blade hitting two more people blocking his exit, as he made a dash through the waiting room.

  In front of him was a wooden corridor and a maze of shoji walls, which Seiki reckoned now was only there to trap outsiders. Left, he remembered. His footsteps sounded heavily on the creaking wood floor as he sprinted ahead toward the stairs.

  More footsteps and shouts rose up behind him as the injured clan members got to their feet and ran after him.

  The stairs were not far. However, as he turned the corner, Seiki found himself facing a very surprised Shino of the White Crane Order [Level 10], in a simple white yukata, whose eyes widened as he saw Seiki’s drawn sword. Before the man could reach for his weapon, Seiki clutched his arm, yanked him off his balance and sent him sprawling into the group of people behind him.

  Curses went up, and an arrow struck a wooden door frame in front of Seiki, before someone yelled, “Don’t shoot!”

  Seiki turned another corner. In his path was a girl in a tight-fitting dress, Yuna of the White Crane Order [Level 13] and a man in dark brown, Toya of the White Crane Order [Level 16], the latter of which already had a drawn dagger.

  “Hey, no one draws their weapon on the third floor!” said Toya, as soon as he saw him.

  Seiki knew he could not fight a Level 16, and behind him the people were already sorting themselves out. Another arrow struck wood beside him. Out of options, he threw himself against one wall as he dodged a bout of shurikens, one of which left a long cut on his arm. Someone yelled again, “Don’t do that!”

  The corridor was a horrible place to fight in. Noticing the closest shoji door on the right, Seiki slammed it open and dashed in. The room was a simple tatami room, albeit irregularly shaped, with nothing but a simple red chest in one corner. There was another door at the other side, and Seiki d
arted across the floor toward it.

  Again, he was out in a wooden corridor, which looked the same as the others, and he was getting a bit lost. Katsumi had appeared at the end of the corridor on his right, shouting, “Seiki! Wait!”

  His mind was still yelling at him to run. Seiki spun around and slid into a sprint. Taking a random door on the left, he found himself in yet another room, this one in a perfect long rectangle.

  Ultimately, the place was not that big, and these people obviously knew it much better than him. On the far end of the room, Toya of the White Crane Order [Level 16] and Arata of the White Crane Order [Level 17] were coming through the opposite door. Presumably, they had come round the other way to cut him off. Behind him, Seiki could hear Katsumi running down the corridor toward him.

  “Seiki, listen,” said Arata. The man had not drawn his sword. “Come back and talk to us.”

  Seiki glanced around. The room was bare, with only a few cabinets and chests in the corners. He was trapped, and he had no time. In a few seconds, the whole place would be surrounded, and there would be nothing he could do. At his level, they could stop him any time by force if they wanted to, and they probably knew that he was well aware of this. So now, they were just going to talk him into whatever they had planned, perhaps to accord him a false sense of agency, and to have him swallow his fate and accept what they had done to him. People were the same everywhere. Even here, he could not escape them.

  Through the shoji wall on the left, Seiki could hear more footsteps. If there was another thing life in the dark taught you, it was to gauge distances by the sound of footsteps. And these footsteps were coming up toward him, vertically.

  That was the stairwell, Seiki realized, on the other side of the wall.

  “Seiki.” Behind him, Katsumi had slid the door open, but she was cautious and had not stepped into the room, perhaps for fear of spooking him.

  Seiki twisted the grip on his sword. If his Upslash could cut through a metal chain, it could cut through wood. His second charge of Slide shot him toward the middle of the left wall, and his right foot stepped diagonally forward as soon as the Slide ended. With both hands on the sword, he swept the Hikari up, and the Upslash ripped through the shoji wall, utterly destroying it.

  Gasps and yelps rose from below as the clan members coming up the stairs were caught in the falling debris. Behind the wall was the original wooden railing. Perhaps the hall had not meant to be partitioned this way, but Ozuru had decided to place a room there.

  With a quick glance behind at the White Crane clan members closing in, Seiki scrambled over the railing.

  “Don’t!” said Arata, as the man dashed forward.

  Seiki leapt.

  It was always a bad idea to try to land on a flight of stairs. But since someone had told him it was impossible to break bones, Seiki took his chance. As he expected, there was really no good way to land, and the crash sent spikes of numb chills through his whole left side where the steps dug into his body.

  Around him, people were gasping, and Seiki did not know where he was going anymore, except that he had to keep moving. Before anyone could decide what to do, he pushed himself forward in another Slide down the stairs, just as the move recharged.

  Behind him, someone cried out in confusion, “Ronin? I thought it was a houshi!”

  The whole place was now in turmoil. As Seiki made his way around the staircase, he found his path again blocked by a group of confused clan members. A ryoushi grabbed his bow and a ninja tossed out his dagger with Spinning Blade.

  “No!” yelled Katsumi from somewhere above.

  Seiki spun around and dashed behind the partition on the second floor, and the projectiles pierced the carved wooden board instead. As soon as the sounds ended, Seiki threw himself out from behind the cover, struck out with Sweeping Blade, and sent the pursuing clan members falling back down the stairs.

  More curses rose up behind him as Seiki dashed across open space on the second floor, which appeared to be much less complicated and was essentially one very wide room that stretched half the building, perhaps for casual socializing and gathering. Miki of the White Crane Order [Level 14] looked up from her needlework in alarm as Seiki ran past her to the window at the edge of the room.

  People poured through the entrance, and Seiki stepped one foot up the windowsill.

  The night air greeted him, and he could see the bridge and the moat below. Shinshioka was probably somewhere on the left at the end of that starry sky. Seiki turned and jumped, just as he heard Katsumi yelling “Wait!” from somewhere behind.

  Seiki was already missing a third of his health, and now the landing took almost another half. Yet, he could hardly feel anything. He needed to get away from all this, from the lies and the fake promises.

  He had dropped down near the main entrance to the building, and as he clambered to his feet he could see a group of White Crane Hall Guards [Level 10], led by Isao, coming across the bridge. This whole place was a trap. Having only one way across the moat meant it was easier to defend against invading enemies. But at the same time, it prevented people from getting out.

  There was a side door, Seiki remembered, and from there he could go around the building. Beyond that, he had no idea what to do, but that hardly mattered now. Seiki ran back into the building, crossed the wide open hall through a door, out through yet another wooden corridor. The stairs were now somewhere to his right, hidden by slim walls, and he could hear hurried footsteps going up and down. Someone was shouting, “He jumped! Where did he go?”

  On his left hand side was a door he recognized, and Seiki dashed through it into the resources room where he had been earlier.

  This was their home territory, so it was perhaps not surprising that Arata of the White Crane Hall [Level 17] and Ichiro of the White Crane Hall [Level 12] were already waiting for him in the room.

  “Seiki, let’s talk,” said Arata. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “I just want to leave,” said Seiki, glancing at the door, which was now blocked by Ichiro.

  “No one’s going to try to stop you, all right?” said Arata. “We just don’t know what those people want or who they are, so we’re just trying to find out, and after that you are free to leave.”

  “Cut the crap,” Seiki said. He was sick of being used, and discarded, and then manipulated into accepting the fact. He was sick of people telling him what he could or could not do, and what was good for him. He had no idea if this was yet another part of their play but, whatever it was, he was done with all of it.

  Arata’s patience seemed to have run out. “Try to be reasonable. We don’t want to hurt you,” said the man. “We just want to talk.”

  “No,” said Seiki, his voice hardening. “What you want is a performance.” Ozuru had admitted to even paying to have all this happen. People always paid, and then expected him to deliver. And he always did. But this time, they would be sorry. “I’ll give you a performance.”

  Alarmed by his tone, Ichiro grabbed his bow from behind his back, but Seiki had already burst forward with his Slide. Again, he aimed low with Sweeping Blade, slashing the ryoushi across his thigh, and the young man fell backward with a yelp. Arata was rushing in to aid, and Seiki followed through with the momentum and spun around into an energy-less Sweeping Blade. The samurai instinctively raised his blade to Parry. This was a bluff. Even before the blades connected, Seiki stepped forward his left foot and let loose a point blank Slide, turning very tight and ramming his Hikari into the man’s mid-section armor with Focused Strike. He knew with this kind of level disparity he would not be doing much damage. The sword pierced through the armor and took only about a tenth of the man’s health, but the impact was enough to send him toppling over with a grunt.

  Beside him, Ichiro, still on the floor, had tossed out a Trap. Seiki spun around and hit it away in mid-air before it could land. More arrows were already aimed, and Seiki quickly Upslashed the incoming Rapid Shots
. Compared to what he had been through, it was no longer difficult to deal with only three Level 12 arrows, and the wind effect drove them to the ground around his feet.

  Ichiro cursed, and nocked another arrow. Seiki was forced to Parry his Focused Shot.

  “Stop this nonsense,” said Arata. “Trap him, Ichiro.”

  At first, Seiki had planned to make a dash for it. But since they were not letting him leave, he would give them the full show. His Sweeping Blade had recharged, and he spun around and struck out again at Arata, who was getting off the floor, using its knockback effect to keep him away while he stepped up to Ichiro, knocked the Trap off his hand and lunged forward at the ryoushi with Focused Strike.

  Ichiro cried out in alarm. He raised his bow to protect himself, and Hikari glanced off the wood, splintering its side. Seiki stepped in, gripped the bow, violently yanked it off the ryoushi’s hand and threw it at the samurai behind him, who lifted his arm up to block. The ryoushi was now defenseless, and Seiki readied his sword.

  The side door burst open, revealing Kiku in her bright yellow kimono. “Stop it!” she said.

  Arata had swept the bow aside with his forearm and the weapon landed unceremoniously on the floor with a weak clack. Then, everything went very quiet. Seiki still had his sword ready.

  “Stop this please,” asked Kiku again.

  On the floor, Ichiro was panting, his eyes wide in alarm, his fingers still clutching an unused Trap.

  Seiki glanced up at Kiku at the doorway. With the lamplight shining onto her shadowless body, the obake girl seemed like a strange apparition that had risen from the darkness outside. She met his eyes. “Seiki,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “You knew about this,” said Seiki. She had been talking to him innocently in this room, going on about territories and clans, and all the while she had been in on the lie.

  Against physical classes, he still had a chance. But Seiki knew he could not dodge, outrun, or avoid magic. And with the obake Soul Freeze and him still locked out of Slide, she could stop him if she wanted.

  The obake girl had visibly no such intention. “Arata, Ichiro, leave us please,” said Kiku, softly.