Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume2 Chapter1 (section)

===3: The Moat===

A low rumbling passed by overhead.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha looked up to see a thick ceiling of reinforced concrete. But he was not indoors.

The deadly moat was located about 20m below him.

In other words, he was below the one bridge across the moat.

Whether it was a large building, warehouse, or bridge, any structure that needed to support a large space with minimal materials would use trusses, rigid frames, honeycombs, and jungle gym structures made out of steel beams. A close-to-home example could be found by looking up at the ceiling of a gym.

Sugiyado did not care how many checkpoints and security cameras they had on the top of the bridge. He only had to plant his feet on the jungle gym structure laid out below the bridge and make his way to the impregnable castle that way. If no one saw him, he could not be found. That was the foundation of ninja movement.

At this point, there was no need for disguises or camouflage.

Hoozuki had already been wearing her ninja outfit as a riding suit, but Ouka had changed into her cutting-edge ninja outfit as well. It looked like a sleeveless kimono with a sideless skirt. It provided excellent defense against bullets, it strengthened her athletic abilities, and it showed off her soft body in a provocative way that would create an opening in those who saw it. Her outfit was a deadly system that used her as a component.

Asagao had not changed either. She was still wearing her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt, but that was not meant for use in direct combat.

Hoozuki followed behind Sugiyado and spoke in an excited way with her silver ponytail falling on her seemingly bare back. It took a close inspection to notice that was a flesh-colored elastic material and not her bare skin.

“Sensei, I notice you aren’t leaping from beam to beam or anything like that. You just find these really clever routes that go against everything the designer expected.”

“Shh.”

He had them all come to a stop just before a castle patrol boat produced white waves in the water directly below. It had a 12.7mm Gatling gun and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher attached to its front armor. If that spotted them, not much would be left of them. Their bulletproof outfits would not do much against weapons of that size. And the boat would have a drive recorder installed, so it would not overlook them just because the pilot happened to be inattentive.

However.

“Incredible,” said extremely small Asagao in an exasperated way. “We just slipped right past its optimized anti-personnel auto-search.”

“We have the camera angles to thank for that. They’re only focused on the water’s surface and under the water.” Sugiyado sighed while leaning against one of the bridge’s beams. “They could have tens of thousands of cameras installed, but it was still humans who installed them and those humans will only point those cameras in the directions they expect a threat to arrive from. After all, installing and maintaining the cameras takes time and money, so they stop after covering ‘every’ route in. If it turns out there was a route they didn’t consider, well, that just makes avoiding the cameras a walk in the park.”

“The moat guards appear to be ordinary bodyguards.”

“Ouka, keep in mind that tourists cross the bridge to visit the castle,” said Hoozuki. “I doubt we’ll see anything out of the ordinary in the areas open to the public.”

Sugiyado listened to them while toying with the scarf over his mouth.

“If the ordinary workers are being manipulated without their knowledge, this likely goes all the way to the top of the command structure. I wonder what’s going on in the black box of the castle tower.”

There were cameras below the bridge, but those were all meant to check the water level during periods of heavy rain and they were not very thorough. By paying careful attention to where they stood on the complex jungle gym, they could easily slip behind the cameras.

When using an elevated route, it was always crucial to keep in mind where your shadow would be cast on the ground, but that was not an issue here since the bridge itself cast a giant shadow that covered up their own.

Ouka moved right up next to him and whispered to him.

She sounded like she was enjoying herself.

“I can see the other side of the moat below us, Sensei. We’re as good as inside the castle now.”

Once past the moat and on the castle grounds, they no longer had to fear the railguns that were fixed in place and could only swivel so far. After reaching the end of the complex arrangement of metal beams below the bridge, Sugiyado finally set his feet on solid ground again and spoke through his scarf.

“We’ve reached the southern railgun emplacement.”

“That’s equivalent to the sannomaru in a traditional castle, right?”

Arriving on the castle grounds was not the end of their journey. The grounds were divided up by several castle walls, they would find labyrinthine paths inside those walls, guards could throw stones or launch arrows at them from atop the castle walls, and armored samurai would be waiting to open fire on them in the open areas of the ninomaru and the honmaru. Attempting to navigate the labyrinth the castle designers had put in place was not a winning strategy.

Sugiyado sighed in his unzipped down jacket.

“The New Sapporo Domain has to constantly provide its four railgun emplacements with a massive amount of power and metal shells and I doubt they do that in a way that’s visible from the outside. There must be unofficial hidden passageways connecting the central castle to the four railgun emplacements.”

“And we can use that?” asked Ouka.

The boy nodded.

“We can arrive directly below the central castle. From there, we only have to climb up toward the surface.”