Editing Cute Kunoichis:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===7: Hidden Battle===

Sugiyado Souha left the tanker truck’s maintenance hatch and entered the evening financial district.

He hid his mouth behind his largish scarf and immediately commented on what he saw.

“That is way too conspicuous.”

“Believe me, it’s a miracle those Azure Dragon armored samurai went along with their ‘sit and stay’ command at all.”

“They do not understand why they should ever have to hide themselves. Words are meaningless with someone who uses their heavy equipment to brute force their way through frontal assaults.”

The blonde twins in white dresses remained expressionless, but there were obvious barbs in their words. He hoped these apparent complaints were proof that they were opening up to him at least a little.

(The vehicles everywhere are partially blocking the flow of foot traffic, but nothing has happened to cause a panic yet.)

That was good news. Not even he could hide the true target if there was an explosion in front of the stock exchange.

He glanced across the road at the square smart building that was the mint.

“Where are the presses?”

“Thanks to the Third Economic Measures, they apparently must print a trillion yen by the end of the month, so they rejected our request that they stop the presses and remove them to a safe location.”

That was the policy that had been deemed a disaster even by the sports newspapers sold at the train stations. While it was true foreign exchange rates were of secondary importance given the nation’s isolationist policies, this was still taking it much too far. It was a miracle hyperinflation had not already set in.

“Good grief. So we’re stuck defending the place against four of the shogunate’s Elite Ninjas?” he asked. “Our cutting-edge equipment can’t exactly run or hide.”

“They might be former Elite Ninjas, but they are on the run now. Do not forget that,” said one twin.

“Officially recognized spies are on a different level from those unrestrained dangerous elements,” said the other.

When they had nowhere else they could go, their pride in that position would naturally grow. It was sad once you knew how it worked. That samurai may not have just been talking about their looks when he called them dolls.

“By the way, why are you acting like my bodyguards or something?”

“Have you already forgotten? At the idol festival, those runaway ninjas went out of their way to attack you, their old teacher.”

“It is unclear if they were afraid you would share information with us or if they simply felt betrayed, but that set a precedent. If you show up on the scene, they will attempt to contact you separate from their plan’s timetable. Thus, we have deemed it best to work with you this time.”

He could not criticize the plan, no matter how much he wanted to.

If not for the fact that he wanted to end this without either side going down, it was a decent plan.

But as accurate as their reasoning was, their presence still restricted his freedom, effectively checkmating him.

He had heard records related to his final mission were hidden in the stock exchange’s server since the Shogunate wanted to keep that at arm’s length. Letting Ouka’s group find that would be devastating. They would be hunted down and eliminated by the Shogunate. It was important to prevent those four from encountering Shirazaya Guren and Suiren, but he also had to stop them.

So…

“Seems like overkill, but I won’t say no to a double date.”

“That is not what that means. Joke if you like, but try to use your romance terms correctly.”

Just as Suiren said that while flicking at her right ear, Sugiyado walked forward and kicked up a small rock with the heel of his shoe. He moved his hand behind his short-sleeved dress shirt’s back to silently catch it, hold it tight, and make up his mind.

With a snap of his wrist, he chucked it toward a large window nearby.

The twin ninjas would not know how deadly an attack it had been, but they would know that a reinforced glass window had loudly shattered right next to them.

So if he added some dramatic flavoring, they would buy it.

“Sniper! Get down!!”

He shouted a warning and shoved Suiren behind a car. She was a lot lighter than he had expected, so she gained too much speed and her dress’s skirt flipped up, but it was too late to redo that now. Guren gulped nervously and leaped in the same direction to support her sister, but he dove the other way to hide behind a convertible parked on the curb.

Still behind cover, the boy in a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants pointed toward a random building. The blonde twins looked that way to check almost on reflex, but the instant their eyes were off him, he used the air pressure kunai in his hand to break the door window of the convertible he was hiding behind.

Suiren ducked down and spoke.

“I did not see any light or hear any noise. They may be using subsonic rounds.”

“Gunfire makes Ouka the most likely suspect. Her hunting gun doesn’t use any rifling, so she uses fletching to stabilize the rounds when firing long distance. I want to capture at least one of them, so I’ll head that way through the alleys. You two are too far from the next viable cover, so just ask those heavily-armored samurai to rescue you. Their full-body composite armor should be able to deflect anti-materiel rifle rounds. Once they’re with you, make your way to the sniper’s building along a clockwise route. I’ll approach with a counterclockwise route.”

“Understood.”

“Shouldn’t we send one of the samurai with you?”

They let him reject that idea with a simple wave of his hand. They did not want to be indebted to those samurai any more than he did.

With his mouth hidden behind his scarf, he followed his supposed plan by diving from behind the convertible and into the nearby alleyway, but he ignored the plan after that. One wall of that alleyway was the stock exchange. If he was going to use the confusion to get inside, he would have to do it now.

The back entrance was a steel door with a heavy-duty electronic lock, but he ignored the keypad altogether. He instead focused on the thick communication cables running vertically along the wall. He used a Fierce Fang to slice through a few of those and attached them to his phone.

The inside the of the building was naturally filled with security cameras, but if he cut the footage, the dark screens would tell the security room something was amiss. The general solution seen in movies and dramas was to play an endless loop of the same footage, but that was not as easy as fiction made it seem.

(I’ll set the brightness to maximum.)

Modern pros would take this route.

The footage would continue to be recorded, but he secretly altered the settings. By changing the contrast between the bright areas and the dark areas, he made it impossible to see anyone lurking in the shadows. That would leave no unnatural changes in the length or number of video files.

Once the necessary preparations were complete, it was time to head in.

He stuck the Fierce Fang’s tip between the door and wall at the upper end of the knob and released the power of nitrogen. He could pry open the thick hatch of a military tank with this thing, so it neutralized the lock by physically breaking the thick latch.

The door slowly opened inward.

There was no need to discuss something as basic as fingerprints at this point. Even without gloves on, coating your entire hand with a thin layer of clear nail polish was enough to deal with that. You would be sorely mistaken if you assumed everyone working shady jobs wore thin rubber surgical gloves or black leather gloves. Wear something like that on a midsummer beach or in a sauna and the police would be asking you a lot of questions.

He glanced down at his fingers.

(The trick is finding a good product that properly eliminate your fingerprints without losing the feeling of your fingertips.)

As soon as he set foot inside, he could tell there were still people here.

All trading was done for the day, but that did not mean everyone immediately left and the building’s lights were shut off. This was when the real work began in maintaining the giant communications system used to perform ten thousand transactions every second. There were a lot of actual maintenance workers and a lot of security personnel keeping an eye on things to ensure none of them inserted malware on the system or swapped out a circuit board. Allowing a malicious device to be hooked up here would cause far more confusion than at a pachinko parlor, so this much security was to be expected.

(How will they actually go about this?)

Sugiyado thought to himself while carefully staying in the darker parts of the staff corridors and set up some traps along the way.

He quietly reeled in some fishing line as he continued.

(They stole the biometric data of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka, but word can get around fast and someone might already know she went missing. Especially people who deal with stocks and trading. If they strut in wearing a disguise, they could find her account has been frozen and have metal bars drop down to surround them. So how will they avoid that risk while assuming it’s already known she’s gone missing?)

He knew where he had to go.

In addition to the normal reception area occasionally depicted on the TV news, this kind of stock exchange also had a VIP dealing room. The primary advantage was not needing to go through a public server, which increased the transaction speed up by a thousandth of a second. That was too small for normal people to even be aware of, but to reiterate, computer-controlled financial transactions were carried out at a rate of ten thousand per second. So by obtaining one of the small glass-encased booths in there was enough to perform ten transactions for every one a normal person was capable of. In terms of a turn-based RPG or TRPG, that would be like getting ten turns for every one turn the enemy received. That would obviously make you unbeatable.

And again, the end of trading for the day did not mean everyone left the stock exchange. In a world where a system malfunction could mean the loss of billions in a single day, it was not uncommon for people to only allow their own hired workers to work on the machinery in their booth.

This was where it got interesting.

It was also not uncommon for the VIPs arriving at the exchange to not be the best with computers. For example, with an idol who was not all that knowledgeable in the fields of finances or computer science, the exchange workers would salivate at the chance to “assist” and put their precious client’s mind at ease.

(There they are.)

“Yes. Like I said, I would like to know what is going on with my money.”

He heard a girl’s voice that was not all that loud but traveled oddly far.

But this was not Bara who excelled at disguises and camouflage.

“My mother usually handles this money, but the account is in my name. Just in case, I thought it would be best to know the basics of how all this works.”

In fact, this was not even a disguise.

Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki were there.

The two ninjas were waiting behind ''her'' in work jumpsuits with baseball caps pulled down to cover their eyes. Their young age was no reason to suspect them in an age of meritocracy where people often dropped out of school to get a job when they had the talent for it. Going after a stock exchange server from the outside would be difficult, but the hurdle was much lower when you physically snuck inside. With some advice from Shizukuma Asagao who was skilled at cyber attacks, they would be able to work their way in pretty deep. Perhaps even to the secret Shogunate data that the actual exchange workers were unaware of.

In other words…

(Instead of copying her biometric data, they manipulated her into bringing them here herself?)

Word would have gotten around that Shitou Kyouka had disappeared, yet here she was in the flesh and not just someone pretending to be her. Even if the exchange had received word already, they could not afford to be suspicious here. Customers were the top priority even at a stock exchange, so they had no possible excuse for turning her away if she was the real one.

The most they could do was view her companions with suspicion, but if no weapons were drawn, no threats were made, and Shitou Kyouka herself introduced them as her trusted engineers, they could not kick them out either.

The entire point of the VIP dealing room was to use money to trample on the entire concept of fairness. Just like an F1 driver would get mad if they were given a pit crew other than their personal team and a businessman would be furious to receive some unknown court-appointed attorney instead of their personal lawyer during a major trial, finding fault with someone’s engineers could be seen as an attempt at obstruction.

Also.

Finding a way to control a specific individual or group through external means was apparently a romantic ideal on the level of immortality, time travel, and world domination. Various scientists had worked at that one for over 3000 years. The list of attempted methods was endless: incense, drugs, parasites, bacteria, bioelectricity, magnetism, nutrients, sleep deprivation, subconscious stimuli using low-frequency waves or vibrations, patterns of color or sound, etc.

And Sugiyado Souha could make an educated guess as to what his students had done here.

(Is this a form of shadow binding?)

That ninja technique stabbed a short sword or shuriken into the target’s shadow to keep them from moving. It was actually a way of invading someone’s personal space so they felt a pressure that made them hesitant to approach any further – and did so in an instant using the powerful presence of a deadly blade. It was even thought to make people submit to your will on a fundamental level. Anyone would lose the will to fight and fall silent if they had a gun pressed to their head or a blade tip to their heart. This was a lot like a compressed or instantaneous version of that. It affected them before they were even aware of it on a conscious level.

To repeat, this was the same shock that people felt with a gun pressed to their head or a blade to their heart.

And in that state, people would obviously obey any instructions they were given instead of just standing still.

(But this is an awfully long-lasting example of shadow binding. This kind of trick was always the favorite of Asagao since she doesn’t fight directly.)

He was impressed, but his goal was still to end this without losing his former students or the Shirazaya twins.

Unfortunately, he did not have it in him to focus on anything more than that. He had set some things up on the way here, so now he only had to make the decision.

He gave a tug on a long, long piece of fishing line.

As soon as a Fierce Fang was dislodged from the wall, it finished severing a power cable there and the entire windowless floor was plunged into inky darkness.

This was a stock exchange where billions of yen were moved around in transactions made at a rate of ten thousand a second, so they were bound to have backup power. The darkness would last two or three minutes at the absolute longest, but that was enough to engage in a battle ''without anyone else seeing it''.

He ignored all of the presences moving far too obviously in the darkness. A professional ninja would not be that easy to detect. Those were the ordinary VIPs.

He pulled out a new kunai in each hand and leaped more than ran on top of the office desks and reinforced glass booth dividers to take the shortest route toward his students.

The ability to move as easily in darkness as in light was the most basic skill for and true essence of a ninja.

For example, there was an ancient technique of holding your ninja sword’s scabbard out ahead and slowly walking. By feeling the wall before you ran into it, you could quietly avoid it. And if you came across a person, you could finish them off with a thrust of the blade before they could cause a scene.

Sugiyado Souha did something similar here.

By paying careful attention, he could see small flashing lights similar to starlight. Those were the sparks of static electricity that were especially common with long hair. If he focused on what mattered, he could tell where the kunoichis were.

He attacked as if jumping down on them from directly above.

The entire space had gone dark, but he definitely felt the pressure of two gazes looking up at him.

“Sound.”

“Smell.”

Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki kindly explained how they had done it. Then multiple blades intersected. Bara used her hair guns made from the solenoid coils woven into her ringlet curls. The darts she fired were designed to confuse people in a non-visual environment by producing ultrasonic waves with the special grooves carved into them. The sound was similar to a dog whistle and the weapon was known as Ringing Ears.

Hoozuki used a combination cross shuriken given plenty of force by placing it between the tires of her folded-up off-road motorcycle in a process similar to a pitching machine. She was using an engine, but by padding it on the level of a gun’s silencer, she had eliminated almost all the sound.

Their dual attacks crashed into his thrown air pressure kunai in midair, sending orange sparks everywhere. For a brief moment, that blossom in the dark burned the ninjas’ beautiful outlines into his retinas like with a camera’s flash.

(I only threw it with my arm muscles. That isn’t enough for a direct competition with Bara and Hoozuki’s powered weapons!!)

He accepted his disadvantage here.

If he was going to give up just because he did not have the upper hand, he never would have come here in the first place.

(Hoozuki’s attacks can break the sound barrier and Bara’s coilgun can reach Mach 7.5 when she uses the max power of her Final Cannon using depleted uranium alloy. …But what does that matter? I have nothing to fear from a projectile that won’t hit me!!)

He landed and rolled to the side while pulling a kunai from his lower back. He heard a roar of air in response. They too had move to the side, so their paths were drawing a large circle.

There were plenty of simple ways of peeling back the veil of darkness, like anti-personnel radar and IR goggles. Hoozuki in particular could install all sorts of gadgets on Countless Calamities. But Sugiyado concluded that was not the case here. Using the simple enhancements of a machine made you susceptible to disturbance and deception tactics using chaff or flares. He doubted they would rely on something like that in a once-in-a-lifetime battle.

(In the end, they’ll rely on their own senses. That much won’t change.)

There was no obvious exchange of words at this point. Naming yourself before battle could be left to the combat-obsessed samurai who did not have to hide themselves. That could be handled once you had won and secured your safety.

The girls had not forgotten his teachings.

Ironically, that was what made them such a great threat here.

(I should target Hoozuki first. Because she uses that off-road bike as a giant launching gadget, I can get it to destroy itself by lodging a Fierce Fang in there and messing with the transfer of force. Bara detects her target via sound, so the loud noise should affect her more. I can use that to deal with her.)

Bara and Hoozuki could both fight on the level of a tank or fighter craft when at full power, but that destructive force and penetrative power could work against them too. Their job here was to acquire the Shogunate’s unofficial classified data hidden in the financial transaction server, so they could not afford to destroy that device with a stray shot before their work was complete.

(Then again, I’m in similar situation myself since my Fierce Fangs can be used against tanks, but I can’t afford to hurt my cute students with them.)

They had to be finishing their calculations on how to get at him too. After all, ninja battles rarely lasted long. The very next move would change things significantly.

Yet he was interrupted by something else.

It came from his earphone.

“Yellow Dragon 00 to all units.”

(Hm? Is that Guren or Suiren???)

“We cannot find Advisor at the base of the building designated as our rendezvous point. I repeat, we have lost track of Advisor.”

They played by the rules far too much.

He considered risking a transmission during the confusion to invent some reason why he was running late, but things took a turn for the worse.

“All units, please prepare for the worst. We must assume Advisor was attacked like last time, so put together a search team immediately. Select personnel from White Tiger, Black Tortoise, Azure Dragon, and Vermilion Bird Units and follow the path Advisor is thought to have followed.”

“I will continue to the rooftop to secure the sniper there while Guren joins the search team. We must fulfill our allotted roles. Armored samurai, it is time for the combat you so love.”

He thought not just his throat but his lungs had gone dry. At this rate, they would make it in here. Even if they did not think this was the true target, they might search all of the nearby buildings just to be thorough.

That cut off any hope of escape for Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki.

What would happen if they were surrounded by multiple armored samurai?

With Gatling guns, grenade launchers, and rocket launchers, those warriors were embodiments of firepower, so if they pushed in en masse, even his Elite Ninja students could be overpowered and turned to mincemeat. It was not an issue of strength; this was an entirely different type of combat.

He had no time.

(It would be quicker if I did something, but that would arouse suspicion. A call from me is a card I can only play once, so I don’t want to use it up right away.)

He had to make a decision.

He changed direction in the darkness and jabbed his elbow in the gut of a wandering civilian guard to swiftly knock him unconscious.

His goal was the radio in the guard’s hand.

He made sure to spray a borrowed bottle of deodorant onto the microphone to alter his voice on the transmission before sending it out on the standard guard frequency that anyone could pick up.

“Alert, alert! Wires and a glass bottle spotted near Exit A4. It appears to be an acid bomb, so don’t touch it!! Even environmental suits can be melted through with aqua regia or hydrofluoric acid!!”

That would stop the armored samurai. Their banana-thick fingers were not suited for precise work and, as well-protected against explosive blasts and bullets as they were, they should feel an almost superstitious fear of chemical corrosion.

The back entrance would garner suspicion and everyone, including the bomb squad, would focus on it, but that was fine.

“We will be activating the ventilation ducts in preparation for the worst, so stay clear of the ventilation ports on the outside walls! Acidic gas could escape from there, so you’ll be killed if you’re close by!!”

Needless to say, those ducts would be Bara and Hoozuki’s escape route. No one would want to check inside there until the presence of an acid bomb had been completely refuted.

Now he only had to take one more step into danger.

He moved up alongside his students in the dark and whispered one quick comment to them.

“Do what is necessary if you want to survive this.”

He could not stay long, so he resumed moving from shadow to shadow.

“(Sensei, why?)”

“(Stop, Bara. Not now!)”

He heard whispered voices in the darkness, but he did not stay any longer.

After slipping out of the dealing room, he discarded the radio.

It did not matter if it was discovered the acid bomb was a ruse as long as it was not revealed who had sent the message. And he had a bigger issue to worry about now.

(I need to invent a reason why I entered this building and I need to let them know I’m safe before they complete their search of the inside.)

His excuse had to be good enough to save him here and preserve his spot on the investigation team. He had to leave them with as few suspicions as possible.

Once out in the hallway, he tugged on the long fishing line to recover the air-pressure kunai he had used for the blackout trap. Then he escaped to the emergency stairs. He was mostly focused on his earphone as he made another transmission, but as himself this time. He put together a few different response patterns in his head because he could not afford a mistake here.

“This is Advisor. Can you hear me, Yellow Dragon 00!”

“Yellow Dragon 00 here. Where are you?”

“In the stock exchange across the street. My route was cut off by their line of fire and I couldn’t make any further progress that way, so I decided to climb atop a nearby building to pursue the sniper on the rooftop level. Play the rest of this by ear!”

“Are you sure you can do that on your own? How do you plan to deal with the sniper even if you do reach the roof?”

They were weirdly worried for him and it was nothing but a nuisance at the moment. He simply had to interpret it as them treating him with care instead of suspecting him.

“We aren’t being targeted with an anti-materiel rifle in the middle of the desert. The range of a sniper rifle in an urban environment full of buildings, is only 100-150m. Meanwhile, the world record with hand-thrown weapons is more than 200m. I could actually hit them using a curved parabolic arc and they could do the same if we’re talking about Ouka’s unrifled Midnight Tempest. She forcibly stabilizes her sniper shots with dart-like fletching, so we’re on even footing here!”

“But…”

“I’m not going for a headshot here. I can use a random downpour of blades to pin Ouka on the rooftop while the rest of you climb to her position as planned. This won’t last forever, so I’m only holding your target in place for you. The sooner you secure the sniper, the less time I have to spend being viewed through their multi-purpose sight!”

“Understood. But you need to provide a report on this afterwards.”

“Gladly, if I live to do so. I’m ending this transmission.”

He had arrived at the rooftop.

He threw open the metal door and looked around.

The entire story about a rooftop sniper had been a bluff meant to get him away from Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s watchful eyes, so he was not going to find Kuhou Ouka up here. And if they found no one up here after he made such a fuss about it, the samurai would likely force him and the twin sisters to take responsibility for the blunder.

But he could not offer them the real Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki in the stock exchange either.

At this rate, they would hold an indiscriminate search of the financial district and his four students would be found. That would undoubtedly lead to bloodshed and that was not what he wanted.

He had to get Guren and Suiren to back down as soon as possible.

And he had to get Ouka’s group to give up on the stock exchange server.

What did he need to get both sides to spontaneously back off without anything appearing unnatural? What did he have to do? He wracked his brains in the short time he had.

(That’s the only option.)

After focusing himself so hard it seemed to take years off his life, he looked up once more.

He had reached a conclusion.

(Guren and Suiren are on official duty here. Soldiers will withdraw if they take an unexpected level of damage.)

He breathed in and out.

(Ouka’s group is doing all this to preserve the honor of someone other than themselves. If they lose that person before their very eyes, they will lose any reason to keep going.)

Was that really the right answer?

Was he wrong about this?

He put his thoughts to words as if checking over every little thing in his head.

(I’m on the investigation team and I’m those girls’ teacher, so both sides will quickly withdraw if I die in some spectacular way.)