Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===2: Further Problems===

The twins wearing cheerleader-like ninja outfits made from a combination of a sleeveless white kimono and a miniskirt were hurriedly working within an ambulance.

“Suiren, prepare the blood test. I want to see what he was given.”

“Understood, Guren. I will also prepare the stomach pump and the full-body dialysis. If this is slow-acting, there’s still time.”

Sugiyado Souha in his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants had been taken aboard an ambulance they had called instead of heading back onto their tanker truck. He was lying on an electric stretcher, his shirt was opened, and several electrodes attached to cords were pasted to his chest. The truck likely had the equipment for this sort of thing, but they probably did not want anyone associating it with something that stood out so badly.

All three of them left the international airport aboard the ambulance.

“…”

At this rate, they would discover he had been given an antidote for the poison. That could lead to suspicions about collusion between him and his students.

He briefly considered what was going to happen.

If the antidote was discovered, no matter what reason he gave for it, he would be removed from the team since he clearly still had some kind of favorable connection with the targets. That would be an option here. In fact, it would be the best option if he wanted to avoid fighting his students. He might be confined for a while afterwards, but he would be freed soon enough.

But that would prevent him from having any involvement in this incident.

Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

They had not grown corrupt and they were not abusing their ninja skills to cause some major incident. They were obeying the conviction in their heart and attempting to find the truth of the final mission that had so greatly influenced his life.

At this rate, they would never return alive.

So he could not sit idly by and let it happen.

He knew all too well that taking on a burden beyond his abilities would come with a terrible price, just like it had back when he lost everything.

But.

Even so.

It was their time with him that had raised them to feel this righteous anger toward what had happened during that final mission. If he did nothing as they walked toward the precipice, he would have as good as murdered them himself.

His actions here were restricted, but it was still the best place for him to gather information related to the threat those girls faced.

He could not let himself be kicked out.

Ouka’s group did have to be stopped after stealing the modular nuclear reactor and abducting a top idol, but he knew nothing good would come of letting things play out according to the scenario drawn up by the shogunate’s darkness.

He had to outdo them.

He had to use them.

And what did he need to do that? What could he do to avoid suspicion, acquire information on their quarry, and sow confusion within the investigation team?

(The antidote.)

He focused on that.

His options here were limited, so he materialized the smallest of the hurdles he had to clear.

(First, I need to stop them from analyzing the antidote or researching where it came from. I need to trick them. If I don’t, I won’t make it any further. I can’t let them think the antidote came from Ouka. If I’m kicked out of here, I can’t stop those four.)

“Ugh.”

He wrinkled the scar on his nose while groaning and twisting on the stretcher. He rolled from his back to his side and used that movement to catch some of the tape between his body and the stretcher and peel it away to lift up an electrode. Then he only had to place his phone on it and have it vibrate by setting off an alarm in silent mode.

The unnatural vibration messed with the contact between electrode and skin to create an abnormality on the EKG monitor without the need for an outside electrical source.

“His heartrate is abnormal! The amplitude pattern is fluctuating! He’ll go into shock at this rate!!”

“Damn!! Sugiyado-san!!”

It was a little more complicated, but the idea was not all that different from a small child in the school infirmary messing with the thermometer to get an excuse to skip class. Everything had its uses. Even silent mode was fairly loud in quiet places, but it could go unnoticed when there was a lot of other noise around.

Shirazaya Guren gulped and quickly grabbed his shoulders to roll him onto his back again, but he gathered his strength to fight it and kicked his legs in a way that would not put pressure on his damaged back. It would look a lot like he was convulsing as deadly poison circulated through his body. Forcing your way through with brute strength was not the only way to do things. A ninja needed ways to make themselves look weak as well.

If he was rolled onto his back, the phone’s presence would be discovered, so he ended that trick and reduced the intensity of his feigned convulsions.

“Has he stabilized?”

“No, we can’t know that for sure. He could deteriorate at any moment. Prepare the stomach pump!”

While the twins were focused on the monitor, he snuck a hand behind his back and pulled one of his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais from below his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt. He may have been able to aim for defenseless Guren and Suiren’s throats, but he that would mean wiping out the investigation team he needed to use.

(The stretcher uses electric assistance. That means it has a large motor…and a magnet.)

The kunai’s tungsten steel was not the most magnetic of materials, but that was not what he was interested in. He used the pointed tip to unscrew and pop off the cover and then he pulled out the powerful neodymium magnet used for the motor.

The preparation was simple.

“!!”

With an extra large “convulsion”, his back and the rest of his body hopped up and he pushed his palm against the side of a piece of precision machinery in the cramped ambulance. No, he pressed the neodymium magnet against it.

Needless to say, pressing a magnet against a medical computer would cause a malfunction.

“Ah!?”

Shirazaya Suiren’s white hair extension swayed as she cried out and Guren quickly reached for the wiring behind the device, but he used that moment to slip the magnet behind his hips and then return it to the stretcher’s motor while they were not looking. His phone, the air pressure kunai, and the neodymium magnet were all like balls he was juggling. But right now he needed a certain type of courage more than skilled fingers. He was redirecting the attention of more than one person right in front of him while performing tricks right out in the open. This was the standard method of stage magicians, of con artists, and of ninjas.

He had taken out the EKG. There was no more need for restraint in his performance. He shook his body, breathed erratically, and let his eyes crawl around unnecessarily while grabbing at the chest of Guren’s white dress.

“Oh…bh!?”

“Oh, no. The convulsions are back. Suiren, restart the device immediately! Sugiyado-san, I do apologize, but I must strap down your arms and legs.”

“No…wait…my breast pocket…”

“?”

“My school’s…antidote. If they used the poison…I taught them…”

Guren sprang into action. What she found in his short-sleeved dress shirt’s breast pocket was a small bottle of commercial eye drops, but not many professionals would walk around with a set of bottles actually labeled “poison” and “antidote”.

She removed the cap, and…

“Please open your mouth, Sugiyado-san. Suiren, help me! Hold his hands down!! I’ll pry open his mouth!!”

It was said bitterness was the sign of a good medicine.

Now he only had to swallow it.

Blonde Suiren actually gulped louder than him.

“He’s…settled down?”

Of course he had.

He had been given the real antidote quite a while before. But he no longer had to fear the medical equipment recovering and then discovering an antidote in his body. He had created a reason for it to be there.

“Pant, pant.”

(Will that allow me to stick around for the time being?)

He was finally released from his tension.

But the end was not in sight yet.

The ambulance’s radio received a transmission.

“This is Azure Dragon 01. You say those runaway ninjas have made their move? Then hurry up and tell us where to aim and who to shoot. I’m so bored I swear my entire body is gonna rust.”

“Azure Dragon? Who’s that?” asked Sugiyado.

“The armored samurai handling our firepower support,” replied one of the twins.

“This is Yellow Dragon 00,” the other twin said into the radio. “Azure Dragon 01, please remain on standby until you receive further orders. Unnecessary transmissions have a chance of hindering progress of the mission.”

“Sorry, Little Miss Doll, but I’m not good at all that awful sneaking around.”

For once, the calm and composed twins clicked their tongues.

But not at what was said over the radio. They had both looked out the white smoked window.

A heavy gust of wind blew in as a large moss green shogunate truck pulled up alongside them.

This was clearly a military vehicle.

The back had no canopy covering it, so the giant forms curled up in two rows were exposed to the elements.

Instead of adding armor to human silhouettes, these looked like their silhouettes had been remade into those of carnivorous dinosaurs. They were masses of artificial muscles and full-body armor with sinister Gatling guns and grenade launchers worn over the shoulders or back.

These were the armored samurai.

Unlike Sugiyado or the twin kunoichis, this high firepower did not know how to hide. The crests of their samurai families were emblazoned prominently on their chests to identify themselves and these physical manifestations of death would not hesitate to reduce anyone to a puddle of blood in their efforts to uphold the law. These were the berserkers of an insane world that heaped on praise when they heaped on the killings.

This kind of firepower was not meant to be used for domestic criminal matters. These were weapons of war meant to stand up to the extraordinary knights and musketeers arriving by sea and air to steal the nation’s technology.

Guren audibly gulped before responding.

“Azure Dragon 01!! Know your place in this! If you trip us up by practically announcing our presence, you might as well be destroying your own eyes and ears here!!”

“That’s more like it. Do you shut-in cowards need a nice spanking now and then to keep you on your toes? I mean, I’m sure it hurts to kill some fellow kunoichis even if they did run away.”

“Do you question our professionalism!?”

“You know what we call a so-called professional who hasn’t fought in a real war? A virgin. Oh, but I guess virginity makes you ''more'' valuable when you’re a girl, huh? Heh heh.”

The sexual turn of the conversation seemed to actually calm the twins down. Using such things to lower a target’s defenses was a kunoichi technique, so this must have put them in work mode.

“But don’t you forget, ''blondie''. You might be working on that Dejima-like reclaimed land, but a doll with those looks is only allowed to strut around working as shogunate spy – instead of being hunted down by them – because you do the work we give you. You won’t like to find out what happens if you can’t manage it. You can guess what might happen if you lose the shogunate’s backing in this isolationist age, can’t you? No one from overseas can ever be truly trusted and there’s not going to be a formal investigation. We’ll have you sit down, place heavy stones on your lap, and keep doubling the weight until you confess to letting the criminals escape.”

“Kh.”

“Get the picture now? You call yourselves kunoichi? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just a fancy word for gloomy cowards without the guts to make a frontal assault. Ninjas have no honor. At best, you’re the gofers for us samurai. If you get it, then work like a workhorse and guide us to our prey. We’re using someone for target practice – you can decide whether it’s them or you. So please, even I’d find it a little distasteful to slice up my formal colleagues and make mincemeat out of them. Gya ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

…Sugiyado Souha could not abandon them.

That was the honest thought on his mind as he clenched his teeth and saw those two bite their lips while pale in the face. This would have been so much easier if they were soldiers pursuing his students after being manipulated by the shogunate’s darkness. But now that he knew the reality of the situation, he had one more hurdle to overcome. He could not just fool these twins and rescue his students. That would place a great debt on the shoulders of these twins who had done nothing wrong. And in the most unfair way imaginable.

So he made up his mind.

He had one more burden to carry, which put him one step closer to death. Just like during that final mission, he was surrounded by an unpleasant atmosphere that seemed to be leading him toward a major failure.

Nevertheless, he did not break. He only quietly updated his list of objectives.

He had to rescue both the pursuing twins and his runaway students.

And he had to escape with them all.