Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume1 Chapter6 (section)

===6: A Late Night Date with a Wanted Criminal===

He had no scientific evidence.

But everything he needed to pursue Sagami Oniyuri was found hidden in the past.

Specifically, in the words they had exchanged during their truly deadly battle based on the odd and inexplicable connection they had developed as not quite enemies and not quite allies.

“I can’t help but be drawn to things that claim to be the ‘most’, the ‘biggest’, or whatever else, no matter how cheap it might sound,” she had once said. “Buildings are especially prone to that kind of language. Japan is crawling with buildings that claim to be the tallest, the biggest, or the most beautiful. Ah ha ha. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve actually snuck into a lot of those at night.”

That told him exactly where to go first. He only had 300g to spare. He had roughly wrapped Salvation & Punishment in a plain colored cloth to carry it around with him, he wore his usual short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, and he covered his mouth with a large scarf while making his way there.

The New Yokohama Aeromonolith.

At 1000m tall, that wide-range broadcast tower covered not just this domain, but all of Kantou. Needless to say, it had recently broken the old record to become “the tallest building”. No matter how isolationist the country tried to be, this island was a fusion of countless cultures and that brought new cultural change.

“…”

Steel beams were complexly arranged to make the structure more solid, the hexagonal exterior was covered in reinforced glass, and the slight opacity of the windows were used to draw various kinds of laser art on the tower. But at 2 in the morning, the shopping mall at the bottom was closed, and the tower’s lights were off. It was wrapped in true darkness, but just as Sugiyado stepped over the thick chain hanging between the metal poles meant to keep cars out, a lovely voice shook his heart.

“Good evening.”

“Oniyuri.”

No one knew how many Hidden Ones the Shogunate had, but two of them were reunited here.

This was not some fancy location. A girl with long black hair stood with her arms behind her back in the center of the ordinary concrete square built in front of a mall. If not for the late hour and the cutting-edge ninja outfit she wore, it might have looked like they were meeting up for a date.

She wore a bodysuit, a white sleeveless kimono top, and a front skirt. That combat equipment used a spiderweb structure and its expansion and contraction was controlled by a processor. The white clothing looked like an ancient queen’s dress or like a surgical gown.

Sagami Oniyuri may not have held a distinction between combat and days off. This may have been the only way she had been taught to approach people.

Who was at fault there?

Was this really something that could be resolved with weapons and armor?

“Um…are you okay now?”

“I am, now that you mention it. Sorry about earlier. When I use my psychic powers, my other senses fade away. It’s kind of like being in a dream.”

Based on that, you might think she was alternating between sane and insane states.

But she was not.

The depths of that girl were deeper than that.

The line she considered sane was already well within the stagnation of madness. There was no essential difference between the two worlds of which she spoke. She might seem calm now, but she was still floating in some psychedelic world only she understood.

He had misread that in the past.

He had assumed his words would reach her when she was relatively stable, so he had attempted to contact her…and it had backfired in the worst way.

Approaching her was not about waiting for the right timing. If you were not prepared to attempt it at her worst, you should never try it at all.

He had to face her madness.

He could not flee from her psychedelic side.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” She looked up at the giant silhouette towering into the night sky. Her long glossy black hair blew in the night breeze. “I want to be free and not be tied down by anyone. That was the only thing on my mind, yet I was still following the usual path I had created for myself. I fit the pattern well enough for you to catch up with me. Almost like I was tying myself down to put my mind at ease.”

“Did you want someone to find you?”

Hearing that, she turned back toward him with the night breeze blowing into the open sides of her top and passing through below her chest.

She looked surprised at first, but then her eyes narrowed gently.

“That sure is a romantic interpretation.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

He scratched the scar on his nose and she let out a soft sigh.

“I don’t think I have it in me to plan out anything like that. I don’t know how you view me, but I’m a lot more aggressive than that. I’m not going to sit around waiting to see what the other person does.”

He heard a sizzling sound like someone had pushed in a car’s cigarette lighter. He heard it from more than one direction. And the number of sounds continue to grow all around the two of them.

Was this a sign of danger?

No. She was her normal self. She was not in a bad mood.

She licked her lips and the wind blew a few strands of hair between her lips as she continued speaking.

The fruit of death began to give off a sweet aroma.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“I’m starting to get bored. Can you show me to somewhere more interesting?”

The darkness was swept away all at once. The concrete ground was now orange and bubbling.

She could control this liquid that was even more dangerous than fire.

It would quickly form a great sea that would sweep everything else away.

That poor girl only knew how to approach people like this, or by mechanically manipulating them through calculated Machiavellianism.

The adults had raised her this way, creating exactly the monster they had wanted. No, since the Tenshukaku had ended up splattered with blood, she may have been an even greater monster than they had wanted. They had created the strongest ninja like they wanted, but now no one could control her. Her designers had misread the situation.

But Sugiyado Souha slowly shook his head in the face of that overwhelming power.

He felt no fear. He only felt sad.

That was why he had chosen to once more face his past defeat.

“And if I refuse?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I don’t know how you view me, but I’m a lot more aggressive than that.”

The boiling lava covered the surface.

She touched her long tongue with her index finger.

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha jumped 10m straight up.

His spine ached.

He only had 300g to spare. Even if it was mostly psychological, he still felt like he was walking on thinner ice than with his usual air-pressure kunais.

(Ow. I really am going to have to use every trick in the book for this one!!) 

He removed the thin cloth covering up his sheathed ninja sword, discarded the cloth into the lava, and landed on the railing of the mall’s second story passageway. Sagami Oniyuri laughed when she saw that.

Her switch had been thrown.

She was floating a meter above the lava sea with her legs positioned neatly side by side. She toyed with the stray hairs in her mouth.

“Oh, how lovely.”

She clasped her hands together in front of her face and shifted them to the side, almost like she was begging him for something. She continued smiling throughout.

“So you can do it when you try.”

The scorching lava roared below her as it took in oxygen. He did not hesitate. He immediately turned his back and fled from that girl whose ninja outfit looked like an ancient queen’s dress. The entrance to the mall at the bottom of the tower was of course locked, but he drew Salvation & Punishment, stuck it in the gap between the double doors, and swung it down to slice through the lock itself.

The lava defied gravity to form a rainbow-like arch. The glowing liquid weapon rushed in and filled the open-air passageway. More than that, it melted all the windows and an orange flash flood burst inside, but he had already run up a stopped escalator to escape to the next floor up.

It was not normal to seek out destructive power with a ninja tool.

He had not corrected Ouka with Midnight Tempest because she showed a lot of unique growth in that direction, but that was not how a ninja’s tools were meant to be used. Even the kunais Sugiyado usually used were meant to expand one’s options by digging holes that could not be dug barehanded.

So the same was true of the ninja sword.

His previous leap was something like a pole vault using the compressed air pile driver installed in the sword’s scabbard. It was the same basic idea as Fierce Fang, but the greater size of the scabbard allowed a lot more instant nitrogen foam to be contained within. He could use it multiple times without swapping out cartridges.

In fact, his Fierce Fang was really a downgraded product that borrowed that one portion of his ninja sword. While suffering from his old wounds, he had let go of the sword he had once relied on with his life and instead split its abilities up and carried them around separately.

The sword had a tungsten steel blade because he needed a sharp enough edge to slice through locks and thick chains. It had a few other gimmicks included as well, but they all had their origin in mobility rather than combat.

His immediate defeat against Sagami Oniyuri earlier had been because the air-pressure kunais alone left him with nowhere to stand while the lava sea pushed in, so he had been helpless when the raging sun had burst. But if he had been able to freely move around in that hell, he might have been able to continue fighting.

Showing off obvious firepower was a job for the samurai and knights. A ninja first had to secure their freedom of movement, whether it was on the wall, on the ceiling, on the water, or in the air. They would select the option everyone else had written off as impossible and surpass their opponent’s expectations. That confusion was a ninja’s greatest weapon.

However…

(Gh!?)

The bolts in his spine ached. The springs replacing the ligaments in his legs screamed. The external support surpassed what a normal body could do, so the nonhuman parts within him caused a rejection reaction. He was made all too aware of how little 300g was and he could feel death approaching. This was why he had stopped using this ninja sword specialized for mobility.

That nameless armored samurai had been shocked to find Sugiyado did not use a cutting-edge ninja outfit made with a spiderweb structure, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, and electric potential elastic belt cylinders, but it was quite the opposite. That high-quality equipment had a different weight and output, so he could not use them properly with his injured body. It was about compatibility, not a conviction or stubborn pride.

He had nothing to boast about.

He knew all too well that he was washed up.

He knew he was nothing but baggage who should stick to the logistical support of being an instructor.

(But I will have my way here. Just this once! Just for tonight!!)

“Yes, yes. You really are entertaining.”

After covering the lower floor with boiling lava, Oniyuri floated up along the escalator while smiling. Her flowing black hair and surgical gown of a ninja outfit absorbed the glow of the lava, she embraced her own breathtakingly beautiful body, and she gave off a sweet aroma.

She did not think of this as killing someone.

“I love someone who is not broken by fear. It feels like finally getting to stretch your arms and legs after being stiffly curled up for far too long.”

This was normal for her. It was no different from giving a casual greeting to someone you met on the street. The people who immediately died were like an awkward silence on the elevator and Sugiyado was like someone who would keep the conversation going.

“And I love freedom as well. Oh, how I envy you.”

She stuck out her alluring tongue and another attack manifested from her.

The entire 1000m structure tilted far too easily.

This was what lava was.

It erupted from the depths of the earth and destroyed all structures in its path. It did not matter if that structure was the tallest broadcast tower. Once the ground below it had been melted from a solid into a liquid – from dirt and rock into ultra-hot magma – no structure could remain standing. Not even a feudal lord’s castle.

In another few minutes, the mall, the broadcast facilities, and the upper observation deck would all collapse like a stick stabbed into a pile of sand. When caught in that fall and collapse, no flesh-and-blood human could survive.

But that was fine.

While even the directions of up and down were shaken in the mall, Sugiyado Souha continued ever upwards. He only wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants with no equipment to boost his strength, so he only had that one ninja sword to assist him in running, leaping, and continuing onward.

The entire mall was 5 stories tall. The 6th floor contained the ticket counter for the observation deck. From there, it was a straight shot to the observation deck at 700m using either the elevators or emergency stairs. The remaining height could only be climbed using the work gondolas or open-air stairs only used by workers.

It was like being caught in a never-ending flood. Each consecutive floor of the mall was covered in and consumed by the lava while he climbed over the ticket counter and ran to the emergency stairs.

He had finally left the mall and arrived at the actual broadcast tower.

Beyond the reinforced glass and complex arrangement of steel beams, he climbed further while awash in the light of the moon from above and lava from below. He ran up the emergency stairs that coiled around the central elevator shaft that contained a few different elevators.

There was no sign of Sagami Oniyuri.

But he did not relax. He had not shaken her. He had simply lost sight of her.

The wall right next to him glowed orange.

(The elevator shaft!?)

The wall melted and burst out toward him as a 2000 degree weapon. It truly was like a scorching flash flood. Trying to block that with his sword would have been foolish.

Simply following the stairs up would not be enough anymore, so he twisted around and leaped out onto the complex arrangement of steel beams beyond the railing and just inside the reinforced glass.

He gathered strength using the compressed nitrogen pile driver installed in Salvation & Punishment’s scabbard and flew upwards with his spine protesting.

Once the glowing drops from the melted elevator shaft had settled down, Oniyuri emerged from within.

She looked up at him and spoke in amusement in her ninja outfit that’s bodysuit accentuated her figure and that otherwise looked like an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown.

She licked her lips like she was feasting on the fierce high found in a true fight to the death.

“Oh? You shouldn’t have been able to predict that, so how did detect me through the wall? Hee hee.”

Or was she simply applying that state to her own mind?

In the air, he untied the exceedingly long decorative cloth wrapped around his sword’s scabbard and threw the weighted end toward a steel beam overhead. After confirming it had caught solidly on the beam, he swung like a pendulum and ran along the steel beams near the glass interior wall.

Scorching heat swept through that space.

Oniyuri gathered a ball of lava below her feet with Divine Decree and used its explosive power and the liquid’s jet propulsion to rocket upwards.

A direct hit from this would kill him instantly, but even if he dodged it, the lava being scattered in all directions would be devastating enough.

He desperately moved from the outer steel beams to the emergency stairway railing toward the center and then jumped to a different steel beam, but a sweet voice slipped into his ears along with the wet sound of the saliva on her tongue.

“Hee hee.”

Black-haired Sagami Oniyuri had moved out ahead of Sugiyado after missing him. Her front skirt fluttered as she pointed her slender index finger skywards.

“The sun☆”

The compressed lava burst and flooded the world.

The New Yokohama Aeromonolith was like a giant transparent smokestack that used reinforced glass to cover the entire hexagonal tower built from steel beams.

Boiling lava filled that entire space and gravity pulled it down like a suspended ceiling. It swallowed up and melted everything in its path, including the steel beams and reinforced glass.

“!!”

His soul told him to run – to get as far away as he could. He needed to move down to avoid the deadly lava sealing things off overhead. His short-sleeved dress shirt and pants were no defense against that. A single drop would burn him to the bone.

But he chose to ignore his instincts.

He could not survive if he only ever thought one step ahead. Besides, the ground was already covered in the orange lava.

If he wanted to save her, and if he wanted to seize victory here, he had to continue upwards. He had to face the falling lava!!

“Ohhh!!”

He let out a quick breath.

He twirled around with the tungsten steel ninja sword in hand and intentionally altered his center of gravity to throw his axis off balance and create an irregular rotation.

Steel beams crisscrossed in a complex pattern overhead. Since the melting point of steel was around 1500 degrees, it was no match for the 2000+ degree lava, but it was not liquefied in the blink of an eye. With even a slight moment of resistance, the liquid lava would splash off of it and the suspended ceiling would be torn through. It was a lot like threading a needle, but there were small gaps there.

Those slight safe paths wriggled like amoebas and kept opening and closing.

By slipping through there, he passed through the blazing hot suspended ceiling.

He continued up.

He continued on.

“Ah ha ha! Incredible!!”

When he caught up to her in an instant and began running alongside her as she flew with her psychic Divine Decree, Oniyuri’s face bloomed in a truly unrestrained smile. With a stray stand of hair in her mouth, she licked her lips with her seductive tongue.

She held herself tight in her arms, which seemed to accentuate the chest of her sleeveless kimono top, and she seemed focused on the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

“I see, I see. The pain from the bolts in your spine let you detect the faint magnetism from the moving lava. You transform your risks and weaknesses into weapons and you obtain further freedom from your irremovable restraints. Incredible. Yes, freedom truly is incredible!!”

“…”

Was that how it looked to her?

But the freedom she sought should not have been restricted to this small and bloody world. Why could she not envision a freedom where she could get together with friends for karaoke or look up at a planetarium with a romantic partner? She had forgotten that even she had written it off as impossible and turned her back on that hurdle.

He had to teach her how big the world really was.

He had to correct her so she could stand on her own two feet in that world and reach an understanding with it.

So.

So he could not afford to lose here. No matter what.

More and more steel and concrete melted and lost shape and the resultant liquid was guided by Divine Decree to attack him like a great serpent. The entire broadcast tower groaned ominously and the angle of its tilt grew. The New Yokohama Aeromonolith was not going to last much longer. Sooner or later, it would fall. He knew that, but he still climbed it.

He climbed up, but even that concept was changed little by little as the tower tilted.

His spine ached. The grim reaper was approaching from behind.

Climbing the stairs was not enough. The complex arrangement of steel beams was not all-powerful. He finally set foot on the reinforced glass. It felt like a steep slope, but that was because the vertical glass had tilted enough to stand on. The windows must not have been built to withstand the distortion in the overall structure because more and more cracks formed in them. Once he started stepping on it, it broke and shattered. He could only rely on the slight moment of resistance as it broke, so it was a lot like running on water.

“Ah ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

The pursuing girl’s empty laughter seemed to ring endlessly. The simple act of walking lifted up one’s organs and the shock of taking flight and landing had to be considerable. Her implants should have been replaced since they gradually shifted out of place every time she moved, but they had been left in there, making her life as fragile as glasswork. She wanted to leave the destructive marks of her life on the world in order to celebrate her freedom that could come to an end any minute or any second.

She was strong enough to follow that path wherever it might lead, but also hopelessly and pitiably weak.

She may have been the strongest, but no one would ever follow her. No one would praise her or look up to her.

“What will you do?”

Instead of using the unsteady footing, the psychic girl used Divine Decree to fly around within the tower. Her speed caused her skirt to whip around and she asked a question with a smile.

She almost sounded like someone sad that a fireworks show was ending.

“This game of tag is fun and all, but we’re approaching the end of the course.”

She was right.

The tower was now angled at more than 45 degrees as it leaned out over the city below. He passed through the general observation deck and used a maintenance door to burst outside. The chill of the late-night air hit him while he ran directly along the exposed steel beams.

This was past the point any ordinary visitors would go.

Only the workers were allowed on the giant antenna rod here.

Once he reached the very top, there would be nowhere else to go. Once he had nowhere to run, the rising orange lava would swallow him up.

He was approaching a hopeless precipice.

But he did not hesitate to answer while running alongside her.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Ah ha ha!! Good, it sounds like you’ve got more fun planned for me!!”

The area around him exploded violently, the entire scene melted around him, and the amount of lava rapidly increased. It all moved to attack him.

(I won’t give up on you.)

He clenched his teeth, ignored the pain from his overloaded back and knees, and renewed his resolve.

(Even if every last doctor on the planet throws in the towel and even if every spokesperson of justice in the world condemns you, I will never give up on your future – on your possibility! Oniyuri!!)

The top of the diagonally tilted tower was approaching fast.

Their game of chicken was coming to an end. He could not move past that point.

Yet there was a smile on his lips.

But this smile was very different from hers.

“I was waiting for this.”

“?”

He ran across several parabolic antennae, reached the antenna rod, and came to a complete stop at the very top of that 1000m tower.

While rocketing upwards with the lava’s explosive power, Oniyuri moved to crash into his hips with bone-shattering speed. But he twisted his body to dodge her at the last second.

And after passing him by, the girl dressed like an ancient queen seemed to notice something was wrong. She licked her beautiful lips.

“What…is this?”

Her flight wavered as she started to move past the tower and into the night sky.

Just like a stalling aircraft.

She quickly flailed her arms and legs to regain control and found the top of the tower in front of her again.

That was when she seemed to catch on.

Sugiyado Souha smoothly drew Salvation & Punishment’s uncurved blade. That thick tungsten steel blade was designed to cut wires more than human muscle and bone. The tip reflected the cold moonlight and hot lava glow while pointing calmly at floating Oniyuri.

“I…see. Ah ha ha.”

“To be honest, your flight was a much bigger problem than the more obvious lava. I mean, you can fly from Hokkaido to Okinawa in half an hour with Divine Decree, so you could directly combat a stealth fighter with your psychic powers. The worst case scenario would be if you flew circles at Mach 2 and at an altitude of 10,000m while covering the surface below with lava. If you had gone for that kind of strategic bombing tactics, even I would have been helpless to stop you.”

But she had not done that.

Why not?

“Your flight has its limits.”

“…”

“I don’t know if it’s a physical thing or a mental issue of control, but it works kind of like a hovercraft or ground-effect vehicle. You can pass freely over the ocean or the land, but you can’t fly all that high. Had you never noticed that limit yourself? I’ve never seen you fly more than 5m off of the ground or away from a wall. Not now and not in the past.”

In other words, the pointed end of a tower was the best terrain shape to stop her. She was reliant on the tower, so she could not move beyond a spherical space with a radius of 5m. She could not use her fearsome speed of Mach 2 or 3 to continually fall back while destroying him with lava attacks.

Her position as the strongest had ironically never given her a chance to test the limits of her psychic powers.

What did she feel while facing someone who understood her better than she did?

“Ha ha.”

She formed a truly and hopelessly gentle smile that caught a stray strand of hair while she floated in the night sky.

“Simply incredible. But it’s hard to say you’ve captured me here. I mean, I can move anywhere within 5m of my footing, right? That means I can fly anywhere I want along the 1000m length of the tower.”

“Yes.”

He had thought of that.

So…

“I just have to sever that to fully bind you.”

The battlefield was sliced apart.

The impressive broadcast tower was an enormous mass of steel, but the very top was only a delicate antenna rod. It was only about 50cm thick and it was hollow on the inside, so it was actually thinner than the logs or makiwara he used in training.

It was possible.

He only had to use the tungsten steel ninja sword that had been designed to slice through thick chains and locks like a pair of wire cutters. He only had to convert weight, speed, and a sharp edge into a destructive force.

That allowed him to cut away the very top of that 1000m tower.

“Ah,” said Oniyuri.

She even forgot to smile.

By then, her body had already been dragged away. She could only fly within 5m of solid footing, so if that footing was taken away, she was taken with it.

Of course, Sugiyado was standing on the tip of the tower he had cut away.

Both of them were dumped out into the night sky.

She panicked at having her flight taken from her for the first time, but there was no disturbance at all in his eyes.

This time, the Hidden One faced the other Hidden One.

And the ninja whispered while holding the blade that had once failed to reach her.

“Let’s make this a fair fight, Oniyuri.”