Cute Kunoichis:Volume2 Chapter4

Chapter 4

1: Gathering Truth

It was 7:30 in the evening.

Night was already falling outside the burning gas turbine power plant.

Sugiyado honestly had no idea where or how he had escaped the fire with the kunoichi’s help. The next thing he knew, he was in the safe parking lot.

But…

“Instructor, you hate losing people unnecessarily on the battlefield, don’t you? I do believe I injured your back over it once.”

“…”

“If you can’t stand something, then you shouldn’t force it on others. Survive this. At least for the sake of the lives you have saved.”

She was the Shogunate’s first psychic kunoichi.

But he had left her with the Kingdom across the sea, where she was meant to have the 88 electric modules surgically removed from her body and have safe mockups implanted to fill the empty space. The electromagnetic absorber inside her head had also been removed.

So what was this?

What had Sagami Oniyuri been doing all this time?

He had so much he wanted to ask her, but he could not move and was slowing her down. If he was any more of a burden, the assassins would catch up. The Stonewalls still had their 2-wheeled Swift Foot mounts.

She destroyed the door of a large canopied buggy parked nearby, hotwired the ignition with practiced hand, and shoved him into the passenger seat.

Once she was seated in the driver’s seat, she grabbed the GPS system, phone, and any other trackable electronics and chucked them out the window.

“We can talk later. For now, let’s get you back together with your precious students, instructor. If they believe you died here, they might just start a war with the entire Hokkaido Area.”

He was not quite sure if she had meant it as a joke or not, but it was no laughing matter either way.

They left the power plant in the stolen buggy.

“Oh, there’s a surprise. I assumed the power would be out since the power plant was destroyed.”

“It was probably a close call. They can’t contact Princess Karin and I doubt they would use their precious underground linear motor train network for civilian use without their boss’s permission.”

They would still have Amamo, who could pretend to be Princess Karin and take command, but they could not make that kind of decision so quickly. In the unlikely even the real Princess Karin protested over a video site, it would quickly lead to chaos.

Oniyuri laughed while driving. She always surrounded herself with a bewitching aura, so it could be hard to know what her laughter meant.

“Are you sure they can’t contact her?”

“What?”

“You’ll understand soon enough.”

She abandoned the large canopied buggy in a shopping district back alley. A large train station connected to multiple lines and a bus terminal with plenty of late-night options were both nearby, but those were bluffs.

“You could call this a secret date, couldn’t you?”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. I tease, but there’s nothing there. Unlike those girls, I’m not complicit with your breakout. I’ve committed crimes all my own. Which is what makes us equals.”

Still carrying him, Oniyuri chose a route that let them travel unnoticed to a luxury residential area. The base she had set up would be there.

Just like him, she had earned the title of Hidden One, which was higher even than Elite Ninja. He had no reason to doubt her, yet…

“A standalone house? Even if it’s vacant, our presence will be noticed.”

“The map apps might call this a luxury residential district, but it’s actually full of summer homes for government officials from Edo, Kyoto, and Nagasaki. These places are only occupied two or three times a year at best.”

Places like this were valued for their tranquil scenery, yet some kind of metal towers were noticeably sticking up through the veil of the night.

“They’re apparently shelters in case of flooding, but they’re entirely useless. You can’t get to them if the flooding has already started and you can escape to the mountains if you get moving beforehand.” Oniyuri sounded somehow exasperated. “They’ve turned disaster relief into a brand name. Around here, they’ll dig into their yard and build a nuclear shelter as casually as you might start a home garden. Do they want to starve to death in that dark dungeon?”

At any rate, unmanned security was not much of a threat if you knew what you were doing, so they slipped through the gate of a Japanese-style house much too large to think of as an undercover hideout.

The large garden had a pond with a small bridge over it. One corner had a tall fence around it, so that may have been an open-air hot spring. The boxy garage could not have looked more out of place.

“Interested in the bath? You’re hornier than I remember, instructor.”

“I’m not the one so pent-up she starts having dirty fantasies as soon as someone mentions a bath.”

“Do you want me to drop you?”

Meanwhile, they arrived at the front door. The grounds were large enough that took some doing.

She slid the door open.

Still carried over her shoulder, he took a look at the shoes in the entranceway.

“…”

“Hee hee. Noticed, did you?”

If he could move, he might have gone to check the garage.

One of his students was already waiting for him in the large living room.

“Let me down, Oniyuri. I’m fine now.”

“No. If I’m not getting my secret date, I’m at least going to enjoy that troubled look on your face.”

Oniyuri would not stop laughing, but Bara spoke up in an unusually meek way for her.

“Sensei, a-are you okay?”

“Sorry I’m in such bad shape. You’re all okay, I take it? I want to speak with Asagao. How is Ouka?”

Oniyuri smiled like a child while carrying him over her shoulder. She seemed amused by the difference between his appearance and his words.

She must have had no interest in Bara who was unsure what to do now that the initiative had been stolen from her, so she adjusted his position on her shoulder and left the living room.

“Hey, what about Asagao?”

“That’s who I’m taking you to see. I doubt she’s left that girl’s side.”

Unexpectedly, she took him to bath’s dressing room.

She cut across the cypress wood space without a second thought.

She approached the frosted glass door and opened it without even knocking, revealing a full-on open-air hot spring. Ouka was soaking limply in the cloudy water. No one would have mistaken her for enjoying a bath.

A lot of waterproof medical equipment was lined up on the stones around the bath and electrodes were attached to Ouka’s smooth skin as she floated in the water.

“Let me down.”

“My, my.”

“Please, Oniyuri. This is serious.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But try to remember which of you is more badly injured, instructor.”

Once his feet were down on the wet ground, he wobbled. Even he could tell he was not holding his shoulders at the same height. But he didn’t care about himself right now. Ouka came first.

Asagao had mastered the noncombat skills, so she was looking after the medical equipment. That would be why Oniyuri had said she would still be by Ouka’s side.

“She appears to have inhaled a fair bit of a gas, but it isn’t toxic.” The youngest kunoichi shrugged. “The real problem was the soundwave code using bone conduction. We were lucky this place had a hot spring. It raises her body temperature and its minerals can soak in through her skin. That has let me eliminate most of the unnecessary noise. Her mind has recovered and she was awake and talking earlier. Base on how she answered my questions, I don’t think this caused any lasting trauma.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I need to do a quick examination of your body! You’re in even worse shape than she was!”

She tearfully clung to him, so he patted her head to calm her down before he crouched on the edge of the whitish hot spring surrounded by waterproof medical equipment.

All the noise must have roused the girl soaking up to the shoulders in the cloudy water because her eyelids lifted a little.

“Sen…sei?”

“Yeah, it’s me. I’m back.”

“God, how embarrassing. And I can’t even move…”

She gave a weak bitter smile.

He now realized just how wrong he had been to give up on his life back at the burning power plant.

How could he have considered dying before he said this?

“I’m so sorry for getting you into this mess, Ouka. All of this is my responsibility.”

“Don’t be ridiculous… It was my inexperience that made me lose to Amamo. That wasn’t your fault.”

“He defeated them,” cut in Oniyuri while looking down at the soaking girl. “He eliminated both Amamo and Princess Karin in one fell swoop. He even let his raw emotions out for once and was willing to die to pull it off. Would you call that his pride as an instructor?”

“…”

Ouka smiled gently in the water when she heard that.

He had not intended to say much about how it had ended, but Oniyuri was right. All of this was his responsibility, but he had ended it himself. That was all there was to it.

And with that said…

“Get your rest, Ouka. This is over now, so it’s okay.”

“No, Sensei. You don’t have to lie.”

“Ouka.”

“You never compromise in these things. If all of the problems really had been solved, you wouldn’t still be wearing your equipment, would you?”

“…”

“The garden is right on the other side of the bath’s wall. I could hear the footsteps of everyone who came here, so I know you aren’t the only visitor.”

“I had a feeling.” He sighed. “Okay, Ouka. Can you leave the bath?”

“I took less damage than you did.”

There was a simple reason why his students had not all been in the open-air bath. They could not leave their “visitors” unsupervised.

He hated that he could not help support the injured at times like this.

He slowly stood up from his crouch.

“I’ll head out first. Join the rest of us once you’re dried off and dressed.”

“Oh, what a shame. I was hoping you might help me there.”

He had Asagao help Ouka.

“Sensei.” Asagao looked up at him. “We still have Yukizasa and Princess Karin has ‘gone missing’, but New Sapporo Domain still has Oume and Amamo, right?”

“It’s the same whether they’re captured or not. Even if Amamo pretends to be the real Princess Karin and takes command, we already know what those two can do. We’ll find a way to defeat them eventually, so they won’t stand a chance next time we clash.”

At Oniyuri’s prompting, he left the hot spring, walked across the dressing room, and stepped out into the hallway. Ouka could have changed into pajamas, but she instead put on her full ninja outfit. She must not have spent long enough with the dryer because her hair was still damp as they continued on to the room with their “visitors”.

That room was the attic.

It was a large house, so without the divisions between rooms, the attic was enormous.

Had they chosen that because they could escape from anywhere at a moment’s notice?

“You came here, Princess Karin?”

“It was Murakami who brought me here.”

Something about her voice sounded awkward.

She had originally tried to play the pretty princess role for that young man. She had revealed her true nature to him since, but she was still unsure how to present herself when talking to an enemy in his presence.

She and Murakami Michihiko had been supporting each other much like Sugiyado and Ouka had. The young man lowered his head.

“Sorry…”

“Then explain. We never managed to figure everything out. I was only interested in repaying that old man and saving Ouka…but there’s more to this, isn’t there?”

That earned a tilt of the head from Oniyuri who had climbed unsteadily into the attic after him. She had secured this hideout, so no one could kick her out.

“Hey,” she said to Princess Karin, not Sugiyado. “Do you really have time for this? With their substitute lord gone, New Sapporo Domain should be headed straight off a cliff.”

“…”

The look in Princess Karin’s eyes changed.

It was like the low growl of a chained-up dog.

“Insolent fool. You would interfere when you already know what this means?”

“It doesn’t matter to me since I’m with the Kingdom. Part of the big ABC.”

Princess Karin’s eyes widened at that. She had gathered up what little strength she had to put on the threatening mood of a fierce dog, but that was shattered in an instant.

Oniyuri barely seemed to notice.

“It doesn’t matter to me what you’re doing sneaking around making deals with the Cyrillic Empire. Or should I say, setting up a point of contact at the urging of the entire Shogunate.”

The Shogunate and the Empire.

And now someone outside of that.

For Princess Karin, was this the first actual outsider – and thus the first person with nothing at stake? Childlike hope filled the princess’s eyes. This was different again from how she had approached Murakami Michihiko who she could trust but was still from the Shogunate.

Sugiyado turned toward Oniyuri.

She did not seem to care that Princess Karin was watching. She leaned back against a pillar located just outside the circle of conversation and she shrugged.

“It goes back to Abashiri’s special prison.”

“What?”

“That’s where it all began. Instructor, did you really think there was nothing lurking below the surface there? Did you never wonder why it was attacked and why one of its strictly guarded prisoners was killed?”

He gestured toward Princess Karin with his chin.

The substitute lord kept her eyes on him while propping herself up on the young man’s shoulder, but anyone who knew what to look for would have noticed a slight tensing of her neck muscles. It was taking a conscious effort for her to not look away.

Meanwhile, Oniyuri was sounding listless already.

“Are you suggesting it was to make Murakami Michihiko a wanted man who could only survive in the confines of the castle? Of course not. You two are already mutually dependent. I bet the possessive woman just used the situation to trap him with her.”

“Are you saying someone else attacked Abashiri?” asked damp-haired Ouka.

“Princess Karin has complete authority over New Sapporo Domain after taking over as its substitute lord.” Oniyuri raised a finger. “But who removed the original lord from power?”

“…”

“You can’t answer that question. No one here can. Not you, instructor. Not any of your students. And not even Princess Karin herself. The real issue was staring you in the face this entire time. …Some uncontrollable group has been working to increase the power of New Sapporo Domain and the entire Hokkaido Area, but Princess Karin has failed to stop them or even track down who they are.”

“B-but, Sensei… We accessed the castle’s server and Bara even directly interrogated one of the people who attacked the prison. Those bottom-level people were disposable, but she managed to drag out the name ‘Stonewalls’ at the very end. I doubt anyone could pull the wool over Bara’s eyes in that kind of work.”

“Silly girl. Why would a ninja reveal who they really are when hiring someone? If your disposable pawns don’t know the lies are lies, the polygraph won’t react when they pass on your misinformation.”

“Ugh…”

“Or are you trying to say that anything a criminal tells you must be true? If so, I’ll write Iga on my forehead in permanent marker and go rob a bank. That would make it true, right?”

Ouka had nothing more to say.

Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, and Asagao had all been manipulated by Oniyuri during the previous incident, so they were no match for her in Machiavellianism.

At any rate, this was what they about the mystery group:

• They had snuck into the New Sapporo Castle and poisoned the domain’s lord, making it look like an illness.

• They had used high firepower to destroy the wall of a max security special prison and easily killed a model prisoner within.

• They continued to live free and could kill whoever they wanted at any time.

Was that why Princess Karin had constructed a largescale power system out of the underground linear motor train network to bring back the giant defense system? She would have also wanted to bring back the surveillance and security network that could track down the unseen enemy with its millions of cameras and sensors.

“It was the special construction workers.”

“?”

“The guards and prisoners are not the only people in the prison. Everyday tasks like cooking and laundry are given to the model prisoners, but that doesn’t work with some jobs for security reasons. Like repairing the wall, security camera wiring inspections, and boiler maintenance.”

“I see. And I can’t imagine the ordinary guards were doing those jobs. You need special qualifications for that kind of thing.”

Originally, the Stonewalls had developed from an engineering group that built the foundations for castles.

A prison’s walls could not have a single crack, yet hiring ordinary workers for the inspections and repairs introduced the risk of information leaking out. It did make sense for the government to have people for those tasks. From an information security standpoint, it would all be for nothing if those workers were abducted, so they were likely hidden by having giving them some other task, like disaster response personnel for the fire department or combat engineers who built trenches and bases for the samurai.

They would not appear on any of the official paperwork, so they would also be easily replaceable.

“Outsiders enter prisons all the time, despite how locked-down they look.”

Sugiyado was considering how possible this sounded, but Princess Karin refused to accept it.

Because…

“You’re saying they were behind this? Then where did they get the skills? They did more than just enter the prison. They also snuck into the castle where I live!”

“Instructor.”

Oniyuri did not even look Princess Karin’s way.

She had never been the type to respond to someone who interrupted her.

She instead gave her old acquaintance a sidelong glance.

“You lived within those walls for a while, so what do you think? Did the guards seem qualified for a prison holding so many brutal criminals?”

“…”

“'Whatever the truth may have been, you were officially imprisoned as the mastermind behind that incident that began with the theft of a modular nuclear reactor from New Yokohama Domain. Did they seem trained well enough to deal with someone like that?”

He thought back to the explosion when a guard had cried out in pain and asked for help after his arm was broken.

That was the ordinary response for a human, but it indeed felt too ordinary for a special prison containing criminals whose misdeeds would go down in history.

And when Sugiyado had used his ninja techniques to defeat the attacker, the guard had seemed too distracted by his own pain to even be surprised.

“The guards are not enough.” Oniyuri gave a bewitching laugh. “So Abashiri used a second monitoring system to fill in that gap. One that includes methods off limits to officially-registered government workers.”

“You’re saying the special construction workers were professional ninjas? But wouldn’t they have been under Princess Karin’s jurisdiction since she controls the Stonewalls?”

“Oh, dear. Who ever said they were New Sapporo Domain ninjas? They were all ninjas brought in from elsewhere. Lord Hatsunaga had provided the location to hold infamous criminals from across the country, so he insisted that everyone should carry the burden.”

Sugiyado and Murakami Michihiko looked to Princess Karin.

The bewilderment on her face said she had not known about this. Not knowing about something happening right under your nose was not fun for a ruler or a ninja.

“So skilled ninjas from all over the country were gathered at Abashiri?”

“But why would they attack New Sapporo Domain…and the Hokkaido Area as a whole?”

Oniyuri shrugged at the princess and young man’s questions.

“Ninjas infiltrate and destroy for a living, but that doesn’t mean they always enjoy it. Abashiri is the worst place in the country. I’m sure they settled into various roles there to blend in, but do that long term and they really would start to forget who they are. At first, I imagine the ninjas would have set up a short-term rotation to ensure they had time to recover. And Lord Hatsunaga ignored the damage to those ninjas. If he acknowledged the problem, he knew he would be pressured to send in Hokkaido Area ninjas to help, removing some of his pawns from his grasp.”

Had he wanted to preserve his Stonewall elites that badly? Or had he wanted to eliminate the chance of their leader – his daughter – being chosen.

“By gathering ninjas from around the country for the special construction worker duty, he had created a treasure trove of ninja techniques. Gather up all of those techniques and he could strengthen his own ninjas. If it was thought his domain’s ninjas could do the task themselves, he would lose that resource.”

“…”

It sounded like he had more than just sentimental reasons for his actions.

Sugiyado remained silent, so Oniyuri continued.

“As the ninjas were worn down, they continued their daily mission while training themselves in secret to remind themselves they were ninjas. But that was not a fundamental solution. At some point, they snapped. They failed to report at the designated times and they began working on unasked-for jobs. It started small, but it was gradually growing worse.”

Abashiri’s special prison held the country’s most brutal criminals.

The elites there had carried out their work perfectly.

Some slight fluctuations would not have been too much of a problem, but how many lives would their blades take once they completely lost it?

“The ninjas disguising themselves as special construction workers were no longer bound by the prison. No one knew when they would emerge into the outside world. The Shogunate shoved responsibility onto the Hokkaido Area, saying the area did not know how to treat its guests appropriately. They could not be allowed to emerge now that they had come together as a single group. As a last resort, Princess Karin’s father contacted the Cyrillic Empire in secret.”

“And he failed there too,” finished Princess Karin with a self-deprecating smile. “The Empire must have only seen it as an opportunity. They would have an international incident on their hands if they acted directly, but their hands would remain clean if they let the local pros do the dirty work. And once the Hokkaido Area was worn down by the coordinated attack, they could use ‘international aid’ as a pretext to send in troops and break through the Shogunate’s isolationist policies.”

That was not limited to the Empire in East Europe. Whether it was West Europe, North America, South America, China, or the South Seas, every major nation was plotting to break a hole in this country’s isolationism and steal its technology if they had half a chance. The counterintelligence agency meant to prevent that were the Shogunate’s spies, aka the ninjas.

“But that attempt did not get very far,” continued Oniyuri. “The Empire’s fighters entered the crumbling special prison as negotiators. I’m willing to bet that was actually used to help them infiltrate the city. The domain gave them access to money, goods, personal information on important guards and prisoners, and data such as the layout of the prison, but their apparent plan was to use all that to brainwash the ninjas into gradually working more and more in their favor. Instead, they had all their equipment stripped from them and are currently buried in the prison courtyard. All that remain are a few noncombatant information gatherers and explosive saboteurs. I almost feel bad for those Neva River Nymphs. Being isolated in enemy territory can’t be fun. They don’t have the resources left to escape the country, so all they can do is bluff.”

“…”

Ekaterina’s face flashed through Sugiyado’s mind.

Had that confidence been a type of armor she had perfected as a professional? She had been pushed into such a corner that peeling back that thin layer of skin would have revealed only bone. Sugiyado’s group could still fight, so he could see why she had wanted his cooperation while needing to prevent him from learning how dire her situation was.

“They are the Brown Bear.” Oniyuri seemed to gently place the term in the air. “Because those wild animals broke free of the cage people had created for them. They are a disaster in human form that possesses great strength and the cunning needed to slip out of people’s nets.”

That was how a stray group of ninjas had formed without New Sapporo Domain or the Cyrillic Empire able to control them. They were just like a wild bear: no one knew where they were lurking, they would silence any witnesses, and they would descend upon human civilization and attack based on their own rules.

“What is their motive?” Sugiyado chose his words carefully. “They do still seem to be working toward the benefit of New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area.”

“The question is how much we agree with them on what counts as a ‘benefit’. They were already breaking down when the Empire approached them, leading them further astray. It’s impossible to tell what ideas have become lodged in the Brown Bears’ heads. Which is what makes them so frightening. There’s no way to predict what they will do next. The princess there does not seem too happy about how her political rivals kept driving off of cliffs in apparent accidents at the exact time written on her birthday card.” Oniyuri glanced over at Princess Karin who was propped up on the young man’s shoulder. “And not all the targets were her enemy. The poisoning of her father must have come as a surprise and the death of the old ninja indirectly but deeply connected to her must have looked like a regrettable and unrepairable mistake to her. So after receiving news of the attack on Abashiri, she appears to have decided to play the villain in a desperate attempt to keep the young man in the castle. …But what do you think would have happened if she had come clean and explained everything to him? ‘They are fighting for me, but I can’t control them.’ ‘There was no good reason for the attacks on my father and your grandfather.’ ‘There is nothing I can do to prevent it from happening again.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ Don’t you think that would have disappointed those around her far more than if she stuck with the villain act? She would have had her authority stripped from her, lost her faithful servant, and been thrown into a Machiavellian world while powerless and alone.”

That was a world of deception different from the ninja one.

If your authority and subordinates were taken from you, you were in serious trouble. It was said the beautiful die young and it indeed could work against you at times. Ninja techniques were useless in that world.

She had been doing everything she could to protect herself.

But.

“Every time Princess Karin bluffed and claimed she was responsible…”

“Yes, the Brown Bears knew the truth, so they would pressure her and try to bring her under their control. She was not allowed to step down from the stage, so her back was pushed further and further against the wall.”

Had that been based in personal desire, or had they thought controlling the princess would also benefit New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area? Either way, it showed just how twisted they had become. What if all that pressure had left Princess Karin unable to deceive herself and others and she crashed and burned? Sugiyado could easily imagine how the Brown Bears had strayed, but that left nowhere to run. They were a group and they could easily infiltrate the domain’s most secure castle or special prison.

Sugiyado brushed up his bangs.

The air felt electrified.

“Are you saying the people who killed that man are still out there?”

“Do you have any reason to stay involved in this, insolent fool?”

“I do. I made a promise with that man. If Michihiko has decided to take this dangerous path with you, then I need to eliminate the risk there. No matter what it takes.”

Princess Karin and Murakami Michihiko were taken aback by how easily he said it.

If he wanted to, he could tour the world or even escape overseas permanently, but he did not. But if he stayed here and got captured, he would lose any chance at a future.

“That means I have to eliminate all the darkness surrounding that prison and lurking within the Hokkaido Area. Princess Karin, if what Oniyuri says is true, that will involve you.”

“I was always prepared for this!”

“Do you think the Brown Bears will continue to support a princess who let herself be defeated and captured by the enemy? Are you so certain they aren’t feeling disillusioned with you right about now?”

“…”

“They’ll probably give up on you, set up Amamo in your place, and skip the annoying rescue mission. The simplest solution for them is to slaughter all of us and all of you.”

Seeing the tension in Princess Karin’s cheek, Sugiyado winked her way.

“But if they’re going to come to us, that saves us the trouble of tracking them down. We must all prepare for combat. They spent so much trouble remaining unseen, but now they’re coming to us? They really are just animals. Let’s end this once and for all.”

2: The Puppy

They had finally revealed their true enemy: the Brown Bears.

Those ninjas had assassinated Murakami Shouzou, the old man who had helped Sugiyado in the special prison, and they had plotted to take control of New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area from the shadows. If he defeated them and brought peace back to this northern land, he knew that old man would be able to rest in peace.

“You are a strange person, you know that?”

Sugiyado was using the large house’s tea room to perform maintenance on his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais when someone spoke to him.

It was Murakami Michihiko, the old man’s grandson.

Sugiyado responded without stopping his work.

“Shouldn’t you be preparing? We won’t have any spare time once this starts.”

“My metal flute has a gimmick to it, but its basic structure is simple enough. It doesn’t need any maintenance.” The young man smiled a little. “And there’s another kind of preparation I need to get done. If you’re going to be risking your life alongside me, I thought I should tell you everything.”

“About what?”

“About Princess Karin.” Murakami Michihiko slowly inhaled. “I didn’t know anything about the Brown Bears, but I can make some pretty good guesses about what happened. They poisoned her father, Domain Lord Hatsunaga, to put her in power. That might look logical, but doesn’t it seem like a bit much? If they only wanted to support the domain, they would only need to directly support the current lord.”

Sugiyado finally looked up from his work.

This conversation was now higher priority than the kunais he entrusted with his life.

“Continue.”

“There was some trouble between Lord Hatsunaga and his daughter. The Brown Bears took her side, so they were forced to remove her father from the equation…by force.”

Was this about the failed linear motor train project? Or maybe the Hokkaido Area’s defense system? Sugiyado came up with a few theories in his head, but the young man said something else entirely.

“It was over a puppy.”

“?”

“One day, Princess Karin took in a puppy. She hid it below the stomach of her clothing so no one would notice it. If her father had accepted it, she could have continued to take care of it. But Lord Hatsunaga refused and demanded she got rid of it.”

“This happened because of a-”

Sugiyado’s cheeks stiffened when he realized what this was really about.

He had scored a few clean hits at the gas turbine power plant, but Princess Karin had always shifted her position just beforehand. She had even seemed to leave her vitals exposed so she could use her hands to protect her stomach.

For that matter, her junihitoe was an unusually old-fashioned choice even for a domain lord’s daughter. Why had she always worn that clothing that hid the shape of her body?

What if the beauty treatment oils he could smell on her were actually for the small life hidden in her belly?

Princess Karin had stepped in to protect her body double Amamo, but that was partially because letting it be known which one was the body double increased the risk of being hit in the future. Both for her and for that small life. Had she decided it was safer to take some immediate risk by saving Amamo since it would bring greater long-term safety?

“If her father had accepted it, she wouldn’t have had to give up.” Murakami Michihiko gave a faint smile. “Or if she could take control of the castle after he told her to get rid of it.”

“Did the Brown Bears pick up on how she felt?”

This explained why the young man had continued to defend Princess Karin after everything that had happened and why he had taken up his sword to protect her when it came to it. It also explained how he could simultaneously want to stop her.

Even if it meant turning his blade on her.

Even if he learned of his own grandfather’s death.

He had set aside his own grief and chosen instead to ensure his beloved and that still-unseen life would not meet the same fate.

Sugiyado Souha wanted to protect his precious students, but this was a different emotion. Murakami Michihiko stood in a place the boy had yet to reach.

“You’re a hell of a guy.” The ninja laughed. “You’re sent in as an inspector to uncover anything improper going on and you end up causing a scandal with the domain lord’s daughter?”

“…Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing? Do you think you did anything wrong?”

The young man appeared caught off guard by that question.

“Everyone has a secret or two in the ninja world,” continued Sugiyado. “I’m supposed to be in prison, but here I am. You just have to make it all work out. For me, that means ending all this to keep my promise with the old man. What does it mean for you?”

“…”

“If you say it means giving up on that small life, then I’ll kick your ass right here. There are a number of ways to solve this, so make sure you choose wisely. Don’t let the scope of the problem distract you from what really matters. Everything you do has to be for the people you want to protect.”

“Yeah…”

He seemed to be reflecting on that thought.

That did not mean he had not been thinking about it before. He had been agonizing over it this entire time.

But when climbing a mountain, you couldn’t afford to trip on the last leg of the ascent.

There was only one summit, so if you refused to give up, struggled, agonized, and continued working toward it, you would get there.

“I know that,” said Murakami Michihiko. “Using my metal flute to battle ninjas isn’t the only way to fight. There’s something else that only I can do.”

“…”

“But I need you to get me there. So please. I can’t afford to lose the princess or the other one. Not after all this.”

“Exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Sugiyado could repay the old man this way.

Now that he had rescued Ouka, that was the entirety of his motivation. Vengeance for the dead was a powerful motivator, but it was ultimately fruitless. You gained nothing from it.

But this could lead to something more.

From parent to child and from child to grandchild. That old man was dead. Sugiyado had failed to save him. But his grandson Murakami Michihiko was attempting to protect the next generation. That was a small piece of something the old man had left in this world.

So why would he hesitate?

Doing what the young man wanted would repay the old man too. But the method used here was crucial. It was only meaningful if he was wielding that power to keep someone alive, not to kill someone.

What did the Brown Bears matter?

Why should he care about New Sapporo Domain Lord Hatsunaga?

The boy and the young man bumped fists as two ninjas.

“Let’s give ‘em hell, partner.”

“Let’s give ‘em hell, partner.”

3: Contacting the Brown Bears

The moon was beautiful that night.

The impossible artificial snow provided a nice accent to the circle of the moon. White powder scattered into the clear night sky, seeming to reflect a gentle light. This was supposed to be near the center of New Sapporo Domain, but even owners of the nicest homes here only visited a few times a year and the place was far from bustling with life. A deafening silence ruled this space.

It was like another world cut off from the everyday world.

“Sensei, someone is approaching the back gate. Be careful.”

“Understood, Bara. Don’t lean too far out. You won’t make for much of an ambush if you get sniped first. Asagao, continue scanning the entire area. But don’t focus too much on the most noticeable people.”

“I know, I know. The Brown Bears are a group, so they’re bound to make a multi-front attack and in waves rather than all at once. Need I remind you I’m the only one who has gotten through this entire affair unscathed, including you, Sensei!? Even Bara had her interrogation used against her!! I don’t know what this secret date business is about, but don’t forget that I’m winning!!”

“Hoozuki, work with Bara to eliminate your blind spots. You’re both long-range attackers, so your positioning will determine how this plays out. Don’t get too focused in the wrong direction.”

“I know, Sensei. I need to finally actually do something here.”

“Oh? No orders for me, Instructor?”

“We’re the same rank and you’re an active-duty Hidden One, Oniyuri. Besides, I know removing your psychic powers isn’t enough to make you obedient. Still, I want you to support Ouka and handle any other requests I give. This is something I can only ask you with your superior skill and experience.”

“Hee hee. You can count on me.”

That just left…

“Murakami, Yukizasa, and Princess Karin. You’re the Brown Bears’ top targets. I want you to lead them around and lure them into good attack positions for us. We’ll handle all the attacking, so don’t get caught too easily.”

“Are you kidding me, insolent fool? This is our issue. Do not forget who brought who into this.”

“Princess.”

“Don’t tell me he’s gotten to you too, Murakami!? Don’t give me that gentle understanding look! Whose side are you on!?”

The boy had decided to let Murakami Michihiko look after that unruly princess. Not even Sugiyado was an expert on the maternity blues.

“Don’t wowwy, pwincess. I swear I will pwotect you no matter what.”

“?”

A new character suddenly appeared on the radio.

Sugiyado wondered who this childish voice could belong to, but it was apparently Taganuma Yukizasa, youngest of the Stonewalls. When that expert at combat in dark, closed places donned her gray powered suit, she became an embodiment of violence who would swing her powerful arms down at you even if it meant trampling on the traps she had set up herself, but apparently she spoke like that with her Princess Karin. She sounded a lot like an inept maid.

(Is that another kunoichi deception?)

Given what had happened with Princess Karin, should he assume that Stonewall’s juvenile speech was not to be trusted?

And finally, Sugiyado called a certain girl’s name.

“Ouka.”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“I won’t tell you not to push yourself too hard. Do this however you want. Vindicate yourself in this northern land. We’ll all support you.”

“Understood. Let’s make this a night to remember, Sensei.”

Meanwhile, the enemy didn’t even try to hide. They stepped in the thin layer of artificial snow, leaving footprints on the ordinary roadside and they walked in the moonlight and streetlights on their way to the mansion’s back entrance.

There were more and more of them.

Finally, Sugiyado focused on the small radio hidden below his scarf.

“Bara, Hoozuki. Fire simultaneously from different directions.”

Roaring wind tore through the night sky overhead.

One shot was a shuriken launched from between two rollers and the other was a coilgun hidden in the hair. Sugiyado didn’t expect the first shots to kill, but the enemy would still have to take some kind of action to defend or dodge. Meanwhile, he raced precariously atop the wall surrounding the mansion’s grounds, taking enough of a running start to leap directly above a Brown Bear.

He performed a midair flip while aiming the point of his air pressure kunai at the enemy’s head. And while he fell behind the enemy, he threw another kunai as if stabbing them with the tip of a sword.

(Impressive!)

Sugiyado was the one surprised as he absorbed the impact by rolling on the snow and then hopping back to his feet in one smooth motion.

Two high-pitched metallic clangs sounded after the fact.

The enemy had been knocked off balance by sniper shots from multiple directions and then attacked from her blind spots overhead and behind, but she still hadn’t shed a single drop of blood.

The result was enough to rattle Bara and Hoozuki.

“All that and we still failed!?”

“Argh, she must be working out the origin point of the shots. And she’s preventing me from taking another shot by keeping Sensei in the line of fire!”

The young girl slowly turned around while waving the two air pressure kunais she held between her fingers.

She even had a smile on her face.

“Surprised?”

(So she’s a nekote user.)

While the group as a whole was known as the Brown Bears, this girl seemed more catlike. The triangular decorations atop her shoulder length blonde hair had to be movable sound collectors. Instead of sending the sound to her ears, it was sent directly into her skull using vibrations. That meant she didn’t need to see her enemy. And as long as she detected them, she could accurately strike back.

“Not what you expected? Your enemy fights as a group, so you thought your first opponent would be a decoy scout that separates herself from the group and gathers intel. And you assumed she wouldn’t be much of a fighter, didn’t you?”

That was nonsense.

Ninjas were unofficial units who primarily handled reconnaissance and sabotage. They didn’t have a central group that ordered around the rest. Even with a million of them gathered, each of them could handle it all.

But more importantly…

“So you are with the Brown Bears,” said Sugiyado.

“Try thinking for yourself. Including whether we’re an organization or individuals.”

“Care to name yourself?”

“Kawai Nekoyanagi. But that’s a fake name, of course☆”

Her clothing was a lot like a jacket and bike shorts that left her midriff bare. The real surprise was the almost entire lack of armor against bullets and blades. She only had some belts wrapped around her in a spiderweb structure to protect her vitals. Was that because she wanted to prioritize her feline litheness over a solid toughness? Since she had managed to defend against a pair of air pressure kunais while taking unstable evasive action, she was clearly quite capable.

Nekote were metal claws worn on the fingers. They allowed finer control than ones attached to the back of the hand, they were an all-purpose weapon capable of everything from scaling cliffs to torture, and they could even be thrown in a pinch. And with 10 of them, losing one or two wasn’t a big deal.

A solid clacking sound came from Nekoyanagi’s hands as her claws sliced right through the air pressure kunais like they were made of wet paper.

(Those aren’t just made of a heavy metal. They must be an electrically-enhanced elemental lattice.)

The girl took her next action before gravity could even pull the pieces to the ground at her feet.

Nekoyanagi sharply kicked the jagged wreckage as it fell.

The jagged metal pieces of the air pressure kunais fanned out in front of her.

“Tch!!”

As the improvised barrage approached, Sugiyado clicked his tongue and ducked very, very low to avoid them. He had to press himself against the ground on all fours like an animal. It was an effective means of dodging, but it was far from earning a perfect 100 since it limited his next move. It was like announcing you could only play rock next turn.

The cat-eared kunoichi rotated her right arm vertically.

“How about this?”

Her fingers dropped down like she was trying to smash him with her palm. Her electrically-enhanced elemental lattice claws had torn through tungsten steel weapons like wet paper, so the slightest touch would even cut through bone. And more smoothly than slicing a cake.

However…

(She isn’t a ghost who can pass through walls. Nekoyanagi can slice through anything, but that means her claws are influenced by all matter in their path!)

“Sh!!”

Sugiyado threw one of his kunai’s instant nitrogen foam cartridges onto the snow and activated it. The explosive expansion of air slammed into the approaching nekote, creating a distorted noise.

It was just like a wind turbine’s blade shaking and ultimately breaking from slicing through the wind with its own power.

“…!!”

Sweat formed on the Brown Bear girl’s brow. She must have been suppressing pain that felt like an invisible hand grabbing and twisting her skinny fingers.

The increased resistance reduced her speed.

Just like she was crossing a rapid current.

An air pressure kunai wasn’t enough to block those nekote. And he couldn’t even get his head out of the way while down on the ground. But he had given himself more time by slowing the attack’s speed just a bit.

He didn’t use his legs.

He used his hands to grab the backs of Nekoyanagi’s slender ankles and pulled her feet out from under her.

“Wah!?”

“Bara!!” roared Sugiyado just as the target was flipped onto her back.

The Tatami Needles depleted uranium alloy coilgun flew in at supersonic speed and mercilessly burst at the center of the girl’s chest.

Nekoyanagi had prioritized litheness, but her bulletproof armor would be enough to protect her there of all places. Or maybe she had managed a last-second decision to shift her position so she was hit there.

“Kah…ah!?”

“Do not underestimate Sensei’s trump card, you naughty kitten☆”

That attack was powerful enough to blast right through a lightly-armored attack helicopter or armored truck, but Nekoyanagi only had the breath knocked out of her. Her armor was definitely not your average gear.

That said, she wouldn’t be able to run and jump around anytime soon. She was sprawled out in the snow with her limbs twitching disconcertingly, but she still put on a tough face by smiling thinly.

“Your plan isn’t going so great, is it? If the first one took you this long, what happens when things get a little more chaotic around here?”

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

“You’re only going to lose things here. You must know that. Set aside what any individual accomplishes and look at the big picture. You’re going to lose more than you gain here. And Princess Karin isn’t worth protecting. Her or her womb.”

“Bara, another shot.”

After the slightest of pauses, a shockwave erupted and the cat-ears kunoichi was rendered fully unconscious. But the thinly-smiling girl hadn’t succumbed to delusions of grandeur.

(It took Bara, Hoozuki, and me to take out Nekoyanagi alone. She’s right that it wasn’t easy.)

That had honestly been too much for the very first enemy. The time it had taken to defeat her had them falling behind schedule. If that kept up, the entire plan would fall apart and he and his students would be wiped out.

“Asagao, adjust the enemy’s strength by -3. Rework the timetable.”

“Three already!? That’s going to more or less break the timetable!!”

“We can’t make progress without accepting this harsh reality.”

None of them could figure out the Brown Bears’ logic, but they clearly thought they were doing this for New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area even if they were completely wrong about that. That meant their primary target would be Princess Karin who they saw as vulnerable and incapable of ruling, but they would also lock onto Sugiyado, Ouka, and the others as enemies who were disturbing the peace. Anyone could be targeted at this point.

The only option was to defeat as many of them as possible and extract as much information as possible from the defeated enemies. So it was time to turn the tables and make an attack on the Brown Bears’ hideout.

(Nekoyanagi was a scout sent out to do recon and provide a diversion. So where will the Brown Bears come from?)

“Oh, no. Oh, no, Sensei! Our secret date is about to be ruined by inclement weather!!”

“What do you mean, Asagao.”

“Up in the sky!! They’re sending out stealth air transports!!”

4: The Battle Begins

“Nekoyanagi has been lost. Which tells us a ninja capable of defeating her is out there.”

“They’ll have noticed us by now. That princess has already repaired their defense system and taken control of it.”

“What should we do?”

“Everyone, prepare to descend. Jump off before we’re shot down by the strategic antiair laser beam cannons.”

It didn’t matter this was a residential area. Fortunately, these were only the second homes of government officials who only visited a few times a year.

Maybe it used the air’s temperature difference and maybe it used the unnatural snow, but beams of light curved overhead like red rainbows and obliterated the boomerang-shaped flying wing transports filling the night sky.

Those were the laser beams fired from the city outskirts.

Wreckage and jet fuel rained down, but that wasn’t what worried Sugiyado.

“Everyone on alert. This isn’t stopping the Brown Bears’ main force!! They’re still coming!!”

Modern ninjas weaved between the wreckage, some pieces larger than cars, while they held their legs together and their arms against their sides to drop nearly straight down. There were more than 300 of them. They of course weren’t equipped with parachutes. Bara and Hoozuki began some antiair fire, but they couldn’t hit the Brown Bears who moved their arms and legs to adjust their air resistance and complexly weave through the sky.

Hoozuki’s voice came over the radio, sounding like her eyes were opened wide as could be.

“How the hell do they plan to land like this!? They aren’t going to crash into us like a meteor shower, are they!?”

“Instructor.”

Hidden One Oniyuri cut in, sounding somewhat exasperated.

Yes.

Now wasn’t the time to get bogged down in shallow issues of technique.

If they couldn’t shoot down the falling enemy, then this area would soon be flooded with 300 ninjas. And each of them would be Brown Bear class, making them at least on par with Nekoyanagi. It had taken three including Sugiyado to handle just Nekoyanagi herself. They would be hopelessly outnumbered at this rate.

If they played fair, anyway.

Sugiyado Souha was responsible for the lives of everyone here. And he instantly made a ninja’s decision.

“Princess Karin! Draw their attention! You’re their top priority!!”

“Hey, I told you about her condition, didn’t I!?”

“No, Murakami. He is correct in this case. It is risky, but none of us are escaping this if we are routed. Insolent fool, the most open space is the front garden. Will that be acceptable?”

“Take care of that. Oh, and you don’t have to try and be nice just because your husband is here. It conflicts with that nickname for me, for one.”

“Another thing, Murakami. Did you tell him about that without asking me first!? What about my right to privacy, you dumbass!?”

It sounded like Princess Karin was through with acting nice. It hadn’t suited her to begin with, but now it sounded like she wanted to ensure Murakami knew who was boss.

Sugiyado thought while quickly climbing back over the wall surrounding the grounds.

Pieces of the air transports fell from the sky like jagged guillotines. A lot of them had turned into fireballs when some jet fuel ignited. They stabbed into the roof, split the tiles, and spread fire everywhere. They were like fire arrows bringing down a castle.

Meanwhile, there they were.

Those reckless ninjas were diving straight down into the fiery hell they had created themselves. They didn’t use parachutes and they didn’t leave themselves vulnerable by decelerating on the way down. They were like a meteor shower or a cluster bomb. They carried extraordinary destructive power and they fell randomly across the designated area.

Just before they hit the ground, they made a sound like a spread bedsheet hitting the air.

(The Bugfall? And with such accuracy!?)

As a ninja and as an instructor, Sugiyado was astonished by their skill.

Whether it was an earthworm or a grasshopper, bugs were much smaller than humans, yet they could fall from a height of several meters without being crushed and killed. Doesn’t that seem strange when you think about it? Those soft bugs were easily squished between your fingers, so how could they survive an unassisted fall from a height that was equivalent to a fall from a skyscraper roof for a human?

(This technique borrows that process.)

They suppressed and eliminated the impact.

Of course, they would be killed instantly if their balance was even slightly off. The Brown Bears were dropping from the night sky at max speed, spreading out their limbs at only a few meters above the ground, using foam gauntlets and gaiters to increase the density and sturdiness of their human silhouette, and ultimately eliminating the impact just before it hit them. It was a lot like being caught by an invisible balance ball made of air.

If their timing was off in the slightest, if their body wasn’t fully horizontal, or if their fear won out and they failed to fully extend their limbs, they would crash face first into the ground and die instantly. Given the same equipment, Sugiyado could do the same from a height of over 10m with little difficulty.

He heard a sound much like grass rustling in the wind.

It was the Brown Bears.

After landing gently from a drop of more than 500m, the ninjas had an abnormal light in their eyes. They began to move toward their old leader Princess Karin based on the idea that this would improve things for New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area as a whole. Even with each of them moving as silently as possible, their disturbing presence was impossible to miss when there were 300 of them.

At this rate, Princess Karin would be surrounded out in the garden and torn to pieces by the Brown Bears rushing her from all directions.

However…

“Ouka, Hoozuki. It only has to provide some cover. Fire toward the garden!”

An artificial tornado guided by the pressure differences created with cold and hot chemical reactions and countless shurikens launched from between giant wheels roared out from the burning roof and attacked the open ground. This didn’t have to take out any of the Brown Bears. As soon as this scattered their attention, Sugiyado silently closed in on the tail end of the human wave.

He held a pair of Fierce Fang air pressure kunais.

“Gh!?”

“Gah!!”

Each time he swung the ninja tools, he reaped another one. It was hard to believe they had just had so much difficulty with Nekoyanagi. This was no comparison. He would strike the back of their head or their back to swiftly knock them out and then kick them away before they could even fall, knocking over more of them.

For one, it was always easier to defeat someone when their back was turned.

And…

(There are 300 of them. That’s as much as an entire school. Numbers only do the talking in the samurai world. In our ninja world, numbers aren’t always a good thing.)

Yes.

That was it.

300 Brown Bears were closing in on just one Princess Karin. As large as the garden for this government official’s second house was, it was too packed full of people. No matter how polished each individual’s skills were, they had difficulty moving their arms and legs in a crowd like the store during a good sale. Sugiyado only had to attack from outside of the commotion and they began falling like dominoes.

Sugiyado Souha and Murakami Michihiko stood back to back to keep an eye on their surroundings.

Princess Karin was safely positioned between their backs.

Her and one other life.

One used air pressure kunais and the other a metal flute to threaten the ninjas still attempting to surround them.

“Looks like 30-40% of them are down,” said Sugiyado.

“What now? They don’t seem bothered by climbing over their fallen comrades to reach us,” said the young man.

“We focus our attacks on their Achilles heel.”

He made it sound so easy even Princess Karin, who had her one-handed hammer at the ready, gasped.

Sugiyado kept his air pressure kunais raised and didn’t look back as he continued.

Yes.

This ninja hadn’t just been fighting. He had been grading the Brown Bears as he crossed blades with them. All so he could work out the details of their organizational structure as quickly as possible.

“Princess Karin. The Brown Bears have made it clear how powerful they are, but they all see you as in the way – no, they fear your very existence. But why is that? They’ve been guiding things in secret all this time, so why are they so scared now?”

“They came from the sky.”

The princess in the junihitoe was also the top-rate kunoichi who led the Stonewalls.

Sugiyado gave a small nod.

“Right. Preparing all those big stealth air transports couldn’t have been easy for the Brown Bears. And what about the repairs and maintenance? Since they disappear from radar and ground control won’t see them, they could collide with an ordinary passenger plane at any time. Stealth is a lot riskier than it sounds.”

“And there’s the reason I took the position of domain lord from my father. That is, why I poisoned him.”

“Let’s leave your hidden ‘puppy’ out of this.” Sugiyado smiled without looking back. “What do you and your father have in common? Yes, the answer was right in front of us the whole time. The mysterious Brown Bears didn’t want anyone to mess with the sky.”

“The defense system,” muttered Murakami Michihiko.

Sugiyado continued while back to back with that young man.

“Yes. They would have been fine with the defense system for New Sapporo Domain – no, for the entire Hokkaido Area – to exist in name only due to its chronic lack of power, but the domain lord – and then you in his place – were smart enough to figure out a solution. So they had no choice but to silence you and replace you with a more incompetent ruler who’s so busy thinking about the ground they forget to consider the sky and can’t solve the power problem.”

Meaning…

Meaning…

Meaning…

“Princess Karin, search for a reading on radar or sonar. You can negate their stealth by using concave parabolic antennas located in multiple directions. That can detect the reading even if the signal is scattered. There should be a distortion at one point in the night sky. Fire one of your giant antiair laser beam cannons there!!”

A roar split the air and a beam split the night sky in an arch like a red rainbow. The optical weapon’s path was curved either by the temperature difference or the artificial snow.

It did not fly all the way to space.

The thick clouds were scattered, revealing something beyond.

“Wha-?”

Even Princess Karin groaned in surprise.

The previous boomerang-like stealth air transports were nothing compared to this. This was so big it threw off their sense of distance and scale.

Thinking back, where had those air transports launched from? Even if the Brown Bears could get their hands on the transports, Princess Karin would have heard if they were using an airport in the area. But such large and unstable aircraft couldn’t take off from an airfield made by clearing out a grassy plain. Not even an aircraft carrier floating in the ocean could manage it.

This was the answer.

A flying fortress.

It was more than 5km long and it had 8 wings. That massive thing was the elusive Brown Bears’ safe zone.

Once it took off, it had to continue flying forever.

“Where and how did they launch something that big?” muttered a dazed Murakami Michihiko.

At the very least, it could never take off from an ordinary airport. But even if this northern land had a lot of space, building a runway big enough for that would have been discovered.

“It would also be noticed in flight. Was it hiding in the thick clouds? But everyone knows modern radar isn’t that easily fooled.”

“You and Amamo used single-molecule magnets to control the crust itself.” Sugiyado turned toward the junihitoe woman while protecting her back to back with Murakami Michihiko. “The principle is the same. They’ve covered the surface of that with tiny magnets to control its tiny grooves like the surface of a disk. It looks like they use those grooves to distort the high-altitude air currents surrounding it to precisely manipulate the surrounding temperature and thus distort all electromagnetic waves, including light.”

If you were familiar with mirages, it shouldn’t surprise you that light can be bent under the right circumstances. And visible light was one type of electromagnetic wave. There were differences in transparency and visibility, but the basic traits remained the same from very lower frequency waves to x-rays. And in fact, the previous laser weapon had been bent to an extent. Its surface had been scorched by the radiant heat.

Electromagnetic waves could be bent.

If they could only travel in a straight line, then TV and radar signals would be limited by the horizon, but that was not the case. Those were reflected off the upper atmosphere so they essentially bounced back down and beyond the horizon.

Asagao gave her own concerns over the radio.

“There are no radio transmissions about scrambling fighters on Honshu. No laser targeting from orbital weapons either. This is weird, Sensei. Something that huge has appeared, but the Shogunate is showing no sign of acting. But if they sent a nondescript gray stealth fighter from New Sendai Domain, it could be here in less than 10 minutes!”

“If what you see on the surface makes no sense, it means something is happening below the surface. The Brown Bears are ninjas, even if they’ve lost their way. They should know all about using threats as a type of negotiation. In fact, it wouldn’t be very ninjalike of them to not use any trickery at all.”

Sugiyado wasn’t going to let that scare him at this point. For one, the Brown Bears weren’t just a failure on the Hokkaido Area’s part – they were a failure of the Shogunate as a whole. There was a risk of the Shogunate intervening and suppressing the evidence – which would mean slaughtering everyone involved – so it was safer if Sugiyado’s group settled things on their own.

And from the surrounding ninjas…

“So you found it.”

It sounded like a curse.

Yet there was also some joy mixed in. The Brown Bears’ tone of voice was unusual.

“You found our castle.”

They sounded like a serial killer approaching the detective who had figured out the meaning behind the gruesome murders. They all readied their blades and approached on an emotional level.

An ordinary person may have been manipulated and helpless to respond.

But Sugiyado spoke calmly.

“Oniyuri, handle this.”

It didn’t matter that the delicate machinery embedded in 88 parts across her body had been removed.

It didn’t matter that she had chosen to abandon her position as a psychic.

That kunoichi was still an expert with the title of Hidden One, which was higher than Elite Ninja and placed her on the same level as Sugiyado Souha in his prime.

She was the most reliable of allies and the last person you wanted as an enemy.

That had not changed.

The threat she presented was the entirety of her reputation.

So.

“Understood, Instructor.”

Her response didn’t even come via radio.

It reached him directly.

How was it even possible for her to whisper sweetly in Sugiyado’s ear when he stood back-to-back with Princess Karin while surrounded by the Brown Bears?

However she had done it, that kunoichi had slipped past both the internal and external nets and now she snapped her fingers.

Instantly, Sugiyado’s senses were obliterated by a dazzling flash of light, a deafening explosion, and a wall of heat that felt like needles shallowly piercing the skin all across his body.

“What did you do!?”

“My, my. And after you asked me to take care of it… New Sapporo Domain uses city gas, remember? Extract the liquid from the underground LNG pipes and a steam explosion isn’t hard to trigger. When transported as a liquid, that fuel is kept at around 50 below zero. Combine that with a 40-degree hot spring and you have a massive explosion on your hands. Well, you do need a spark of static electricity to ignite it.”

Underground and fire.

Oniyuri was still Oniyuri even without her psychic powers. This blazing disaster swept away or engulfed everything in its path, just like lava.

“Fire ninjutsu is all about chemistry. Violence should be an intellectual pursuit, you animals.”

With that casual comment, Oniyuri helped Sugiyado Souha and Murakami Michihiko guide Princess Karin through the fire and smoke. They were surrounded by the Brown Bears, but Oniyuri led them to a manhole designed to not disturb the view of the garden. Unlike a cramped rabbit hutch, this luxurious residence covered enough land that it was hardly surprising it had a manhole on its grounds.

But the idea made Princess Karin demonstrate how foul-mouthed a proper princess could be.

“We have to go in there?”

“That junihitoe is a disguise and you’re well-protected underneath it, right? You’re not as sheltered as you try to pretend, so you can do this. As long as you watch your breathing, it won’t harm the ‘puppy’ you’re carrying either. So hurry!”

Oniyuri created a makeshift opener out of a combination of blades and descended first to ensure things were safe belowground. The Brown Bears had attacked from the sky, but they had also sent out ground-based scouts like Nekoyanagi.

“If their main force is in that flying fortress, then the 300 in those air transports should only be an advance force,” said Oniyuri in her ninja outfit that resembled sleeveless Japanese clothing or a surgical gown with both sides open. “The construction workers who were watching over Abashiri can’t account for all of this.”

“They started out as civilians who were given compressed training, so you can’t rely on the initial numbers.”

“Can you really ensure quality like that?” asked Murakami Michihiko.

“I did the same thing,” answered Sugiyado. “As an instructor, I mean. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I took four ordinary people and trained them over the internet. And now they serve as Elite Ninjas for the Shogunate.”

And Sugiyado’s method was to take his time to gradually acclimate them to this new life. Because he didn’t want to damage his students’ minds or bodies. If you didn’t care how many of the total number died, you could do a lot more over a shorter time. That was a forbidden technique for a teacher, but there would always be fools who chose to use the forbidden techniques.

Yes.

That was obvious enough from Oniyuri who was artificially given a paranormal power by embedding delicate machinery in 88 parts of her body.

Sugiyado’s insistence on handing her over to the Kingdom at the end of the previous incident had largely been because he hadn’t wanted anyone to create another Oniyuri. He had wanted to avoid the creation of a ninja training method that ignored the wellbeing of its students.

Sugiyado came to a stop and looked straight up.

“This spot should do.”

“Why? We’ll reach the river if we keep going.”

“We would leave Ouka and the others behind if we did that. We only need to emerge behind the Brown Bears.”

“Oh? Instructor, you’re really into this teacher thing, huh?”

They climbed the ladder and emerged from the round manhole. Sugiyado spoke into a small device hidden behind his scarf.

“Roll call. You’re still alive, I hope?”

“Only just barely this time! Sensei, you do know I’m supposed to be a noncombatant, don’t you!? This is not my idea of a fun date!! These Brown Bears are all at least High Ninja level!!”

“I’m relieved to find you’re doing well enough to complain so much, Asagao. And, Bara, can you still use your hair coilguns? I’d like to collect your spare unit and use it for something else. Where do you have it hidden?”

“There’s a full set in the transformer outside the garden and another in the firehose box along the road. But what do you need it for?”

“You must be exhausted from all this fighting. I feel bad having you handle it all yourselves for so long, so I’m going to draw all of the Brown Bears’ attention. I want you to escape as soon as their encirclement breaks down.”

“That’s the most worrying response you could have given, Sensei! Tell us what you’re going to do!!” said Ouka, her voice practically a scream.

But he didn’t have time to explain it all to them. He also couldn’t push his students any further. He opened the red metal firehose box Bara had mentioned and found the spare parts for the coilgun: a solenoid coil, a battery unit, an amplifier, etc.

His back would feel funny with 5kg and explode with pain at 10kg.

“Kh.”

“I’ll take that, Instructor,” said Oniyuri, sounding like she was soothing a small child.

It was condescending, but she also provided just the help he needed. She easily lifted the heavy metal unit.

Princess Karin frowned.

“What are you doing, insolent fool?”

“Exactly what I said. I’m sick of lying to my students. …Oniyuri, you know how the induction coil works and how to wrap it, right? Head to one of the metal towers set up around here. The decorative flood shelters you told me about.”

Murakami Michihiko frowned while supporting the princess just subtly enough to not wound her pride.

“The towers?”

“That’s right.”

Bara hid coilguns in her red ringlets. They were powerful enough to blow away a tank if used right.

Which meant…

“With an even larger solenoid coil, we can reach that sky fortress. We’ll have a mass driver capable of launching a person.”

The tower was as tall as a 5-story building, so running up it was child’s play. Even if they were also wrapping a coilgun’s cable unit around the entire tower as they did so.

Princess Karin sighed while moving up the tower with precise movements.

“Will this handmade thing really work?”

“As long as we only need it to launch something. Princess Karin, it’s the same idea as the linear motors you’re so familiar with. The principle itself is simple, so as long as they have the power, even a child could build a working cannon. Increasing the size increases the speed, so expanding the specs is a simple matter.”

It took less than five minutes before Sugiyado, Murakami, Oniyuri, and Princess Karin were standing at the top of the tower. But that was five more minutes his students had to continue fighting a triple digit number of Brown Bears.

He had to relieve them of that burden.

If an assassin was sent to the Brown Bears’ main stronghold, not even the ones on the ground would be able to ignore it. They would be too busy pursuing that assassin to send any more Brown Bears down either.

He would draw all of their attention.

It was the best way of rescuing Ouka and the others.

“Will you be coming with me or watching me go?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is our domain.”

Princess Karin’s response put a thin smile on Sugiyado’s face.

“Then have it your way.”

He collapsed backwards like he was falling back into bed.

The four ninjas dove from the top of the metal tower into the jungle gym interior.

And eventually…

A mass driver with more than 15 times the carrying power of a tank gun activated with enough force to launch a human to the moon.

5: Source of the Threat

The most important factor for all forms of transportation was not acceleration – it was safely coming to a stop. In other words, braking. This was true on land, on the water, in the air, and even in the deep sea or outer space. With linear motor trains and ballistic spacecraft, simply launching the vehicle wasn’t all that difficult.

The sky fortress blotted out even the moon.

But that meant missing it would have been the bigger challenge.

“Sh!!”

Sugiyado swung his arms and legs in midair to manipulate his air resistance and spin himself around. He turned his straight-line motion into an endless rotation. He spun like a gyroscope or a figure skater to drain the magnitude of his vector while maintaining his attitude.

He only had to gently place his feet down.

Smoke burst from the toes of his boots as he easily landed on the upper armor of the sky fortress.

Oniyuri exhaled a white sigh next to him. She was so close they nearly collided.

“It’s cold up here.”

“We are more than 3000m up. That’s about the same as Mount Fuji.”

“Well, at least this feels more like a snowy date. I can blow my warm breath into my hands and hold onto the gentleman’s arm for warmth.”

“Let me guess, Oniyuri, the radio is still connected. Please stop provoking my students for fun. It affects their performance.”

Sugiyado sounded exasperated.

“Princess Karin, focus on your breathing and calculate how much oxygen you’re taking in. We can’t have you succumbing to altitude sickness.”

“Who – huff – do you think – puff – I am?”

“Murakami, you monitor her vitals. If things get too bad, kick her off the edge. If you don’t want him doing that, look after yourself. Now, let’s go.”

That sounded harsh, but Princess Karin had more than her own life to think about. She couldn’t push herself too hard.

The young man released a visible breath while gently supporting Princess Karin.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Stop apologizing for every little thing. The look in Princess Karin’s eyes gets harsher each time you do.”

They had arrived on the sky fortress.

Was it based on an aircraft carrier?

It had a unique silhouette, shaped like a 5km metal ship with four giant wings on each side. Needless to say, it did not flap those wings to fly. They looked like wings, but they were actually flight decks equipped with a linear catapult.

Princess Karin frowned when she saw the name painted large at their feet.

“Raging Gale?”

“You can use that as a tentative name in your head, but don’t rely on it too much. This isn’t a racecar. Its name and serial number won’t be written on it for all to see.”

Most likely, there was a similar project with that name and this was meant to misdirect people in that direction. It might even have been the model name for a project run by New Sapporo Domain.

“It sure is big,” complained Oniyuri.

“It has to be to look after stealth air transports and bombers. It’s little different from a ground-based runway. Each catapult is probably 2000m long.”

“Sensei, did you know an amusement park is a bad choice for a date because there is too much to see? Eh heh heh heh heh.”

Ouka’s voice over the radio had taken a disturbing turn.

She may have been upset about being left behind.

“2000. That’s 10 times the size of a standard nuclear aircraft carrier. And this has eight of them?”

Murakami Michiko’s skepticism was understandable. The defense system for the New Sapporo Domain and Hokkaido Area had run into a bottleneck over power, after all.

“I’m worried about how this Raging Gale powers itself. How does it keep something so large airborne?”

The wings seemed to primarily handle the aircraft. Meanwhile, the formidable number of ship guns and missile launchers appeared to be concentrated on the central “ship”.

Sugiyado’s group was on the 2nd starboard flight deck

The catapult was about 2000m long, which put Sugiyado’s group that far away from the central ship. Which meant…

“Hey, Raging Gale’s guns are turning this way, insolent fool.”

“Understandable given how far away we still are. This is a safe distance for them. None of the shell fragments will hit their main ship.”

Sugiyado’s casual response was immediately followed by a deafening “boom!!”

They never would have reacted in time if they had been responding to that noise.

It was like lightning.

The flash arrived first, then horizontal destruction swept through, and the noise arrived last. Given that it was cold enough to see their breaths, the speed of sound had to be about 330m/s, so it took sound a few seconds to reach the end of the 2000m flight deck.

It normally wasn’t possible to escape when targeted by microwaves or a laser.

But…

“Princess Karin.”

“Do not give me commands, insolent fool.”

“My, how naughty, Instructor. Inviting a pregnant wife on a secret date? And right in front of her husband?”

Sugiyado had acted before the gun was fired.

He had taken a few of the instant nitrogen foam cartridges used in his air pressure kunais and thrown them toward the main ship, intentionally placing them in the line of fire targeting his group.

There were two explosive booms and tremors.

The first created an invisible wall from the sort powerful foam used in airbags, bending the EM or infrared locking onto them. The second was a strategic antiair laser beam cannon firing on Princess Karin’s command and rattling the Raging Gale sky fortress.

With the targeting and the gun itself thrown off, not even the sky fortress could recover.

After surviving a barrage of attacks, each of which could blast a battleship in two, Sugiyado’s group kept low while running across the flight deck.

Princess Karin whispered while running alongside Murakami.

“That won’t work again.”

“Then get the ground personnel evacuated already. No matter how big those cannons are, they’re stationary. The Raging Gale is going to bomb them soon.”

“…”

“You ordered the antiair laser beam cannon on the outskirts to fire because you wanted to distract the Brown Bears from New Sapporo Domain directly below them, right? The weapon was meant to protect your people. It’s done that.”

That was when they heard a gritty sound.

It came from air ninjas equipped with a device that looked like a hang glider powered by a jet engine the size of a large drink bottle. Some came from the main ship, some came from other flight decks, and some came from patrolling the surrounding airspace.

Like vultures swarming an animal carcass, the Brown Bears in black quickly covered the 2nd starboard flight deck. The sky was their territory.

Firepower and armor weren’t what mattered.

Only a ninja could kill a ninja.

Noticing that the Brown Bears had finally recalled that truth, Oniyuri laughed and asked a question.

“What now, Instructor?”

“We aren’t honorable samurai,” replied Sugiyado.

Immediately, his entire group jumped from the edge of the vast flight deck.

Without proper preparations, an altitude of 3000m was a fatal part of the sky where even the basics of “falling” broke down. But these real ninjas didn’t even hesitate.

It wasn’t a perfectly smooth surface. There were bumps and indentations they could grasp with their fingers or nails. By grabbing on like that in stages, they could reduce their speed while dropping down along the “wall” to their destination.

Their destination was the bottom.

The flight deck was now a large roof. Countless pipes and small metal walkways dangled down from it. The Raging Gale’s stealth bent the radar waves using an uneven arrangement of artificial single-molecule magnets, so the ship itself did not have an origami-like design. From below, the flight deck looked like the catwalk at the ceiling of a theatre stage.

Each “wing” was 2000m long, so they were going to be more than just the enormous flight deck. This thing carried countless fighters, bombers, and whatever else, so they needed enough space to store them. The Raging Gale’s main ship didn’t seem big enough for that. The area below the flight deck “roof” functioned as the hangar and maintenance bay.

Sugiyado’s group landed on the pipes and metal walkways running below the giant roof and ran across them as light as the wind. It didn’t matter how powerful the people on the roof were when they were out of reach.

But there was still a threat.

“Here they come, insolent fool!”

“Deal with them yourself.”

Sugiyado gave his exasperated response while continuing to run and throwing Fierce Fang air pressure kunais into empty air. The ninjas who had been in the air before landing on the flight deck could circle below using those flight units resembling hang gliders. Sugiyado threw his air pressure kunais to destroy their wings or jet engines and send them plummeting toward the ground.

Needless to say, the Brown Bears were a formidable foe.

Each and every one of them was skilled enough to fight on or above the level of a former Hidden One like Sugiyado.

But.

That’s why he did this.

He had them gather together as a single group so their individual talents didn’t have a chance to shine. Not even the faster sprinter in the world could move in a train packed to 300% capacity. By sowing discord in the enemy force and making them trip each other up, he could easily draw out a far greater result than the firepower he employed. This was exactly what ninjas excelled at.

“That’s incredible,” commented Murakami Michihiko, earning him a glare from Princess Karin.

“Are they too reliant on their equipment?” Oniyuri sounded almost disappointed. “Even the most convenient toy won’t do you any good in circumstances it wasn’t designed for.”

“Still, where did they build all this behind my back?”

Princess Karin couldn’t find an answer, so Sugiyado supplied some theories.

“The Raging Gale may have been built outside the Hokkaido Area. Maybe outside the country altogether.”

“…”

“The Brown Bears are an abnormal group that sprouted up from the workers hired to provide a second layer of security at Abashiri’s special prison, but plenty of outsiders would benefit if they caused enough trouble. That’s generally how it works with these irregular conflicts. Very few criminal groups truly act alone. People who don’t want to get their hands dirty are always sending them money and weapons in secret.”

2000m was nothing for a trained ninja. They were nearly at the base of the flight deck.

But before they reached the main ship, Oniyuri’s nose twitched and she looked up.

“I smell explosives.”

“I had a feeling they would purge it. Murakami, Princess Karin!!”

Sugiyado got his warning out just before something exploded.

This was not an ordinary explosion that spread out in all directions from a central point. Orange sparks raced across the surface of the flight deck like an invisible blade was cutting through the thick metal.

It was sliced through at the very base.

To cut away the entire 2000m wing.

It was a form of autotomy.

It was the same as a captured crab or spider breaking away its own leg to escape the threat.

Anyone still on the wing would crash down to the surface and be killed on impact.

At this point, not even Sugiyado’s group needed any tricks. There was only one way to survive. Before gravity could find its grip on the tilting flight deck and pull it down, they had to jump to the Raging Gale’s stable main ship.

“Ohhhh!!!” roared Sugiyado as he ran along the lurching catwalk and leaped from the severed edge which was still glowing orange from the force of the explosives.

No matter how much he schemed and turned the tables on the enemy, it was his daily training that mattered in the end. And this wasn’t true for Sugiyado alone.

The four ninjas soared through the air at an altitude of 3000m. Sugiyado Souha tumbled into the Raging Gale sky fortress’s main ship before the thick emergency shutter could close off the opening left by purging the wing.

“Phew,” he sighed, but he of course didn’t relax yet. In battle, it was easiest to lose your life in the moment following a success. Your personal circumstances had no effect on what happened in the world as a whole. Or to put it another way, the enemy wasn’t going to wait.

“Oniyuri, Murakami, Princess Karin.”

“You worry too much, Instructor. You need to relax and think of this as a double date,” said Oniyuri, her white cloth ninja outfit swaying elegantly around her.

“I’m fine too,” said Murakami Michihiko.

“Why am I part of your roll call? You aren’t planning to put a collar on me too, are you?”

He was relieved to find none of them were foolish enough to miss boarding the train.

Princess Karin’s irritation was about more than just how unreliable Murakami Michihiko was being. That entire flight deck had fallen toward New Sapporo Domain from this high up. The area below was a deserted luxury residential region. If not for that, the result would have been a tragedy greater than a passenger plane crash.

(Ouka. And the others.)

Sugiyado was worried, but letting it show wouldn’t help. In the ninja world, soft emotions were targeted as a vulnerability.

You couldn’t forget your human emotions, but you couldn’t let anyone notice them. He had to remember that this was the very center of enemy territory. It was best to assume every last wall had very dangerous ears.

(We’re essentially down the Brown Bear’s gullet now. The more trouble we cause in its heart, the less it can focus its claws and fangs on Ouka and the others on the surface.)

“Now, then.”

The Raging Gale’s main ship was also enormous, but it appeared to be structured a lot like a human’s innards. In other words, everything necessary was packed in tight. The passageway was narrow and winding and all the necessary equipment for the flying aircraft carrier was packed in like a folded accordion.

Oniyuri looked around with interest.

She generally gave off a sweetly rotten allure, but she occasionally displayed a childlike innocence. But thinking she was safe to be around at those times would be a terrible mistake. Oniyuri’s devilish charm had more than one way of leading people astray.

“The ceilings are low thanks to the pipes and lights and these narrow corridors make frequent right-angle turns. It’s the same idea as a samurai’s mansion. It’s designed to keep any intruders from wielding long weapons.”

“So if the Brown Bears rush us in here…”

“That won’t happen, sheltered princess. If they tried it, we would only need to knock back the lead group and they would all fall like dominoes.”

“Whore. You dare point at me and call me sheltered?”

“Having a side job must be nice. You can switch titles whenever one becomes inconvenient.”

“(Hey, um, hey?)”

“Don’t look at me. She’s your wife. You restrain her.”

Sugiyado Souha casually sidestepped one of the most difficult problems in the world.

Camping out at a corner and either spraying gunfire or filling the corridor with poison gas would be a lot more “surefire” than wielding a sword or spear, but Sugiyado could think of two or three different ways of getting around that. Nothing in the world was truly “surefire”. If you calmly analyzed the pros and cons of each option, an exit would present itself.

But as they continued on, they found no ninja ambushes. Nor were they observed with security cameras or drones. Sugiyado guessed the Brown Bears had chosen the silent route. They would wait for the eerie silence to fill Sugiyado’s group with doubts that grew into paranoia. Once that destroyed their teamwork, the Brown Bears would make their surprise attack. It was the same idea as a haunted house sending people down a long, straight path with no scares in order to scare the guests all the more at the next corner. The easiest target for that kind of psychological warfare was probably Princess Karin. Of the four, she had the greatest tendency to start arguing with the others.

“Princess Karin.”

“I’m not a child. I know the risks.”

They held that exchange while continuing onward.

However.

They were speaking aloud and making other noises in enemy territory, but there was still no response. Sugiyado knew suspecting tricks within tricks within tricks would get you nowhere in the ninja world, but something still felt off even if this was a trap. This went beyond an artificial “creepy silence”.

“Is there…really nothing here?” asked Murakami Michihiko, cautiously holding his metal flute weapon at the ready.

It felt like they had nervously walked down the long straightaway in a haunted house only to find they had somehow arrived at the staff only door.

“…?”

“Instructor.”

“I know. Always keep multiple escape routes in mind, Oniyuri. This is no coincidence. It feels intentional. They may be luring us in so they can surround us and cut off our escape.”

Sugiyado still hadn’t answered his question as they walked carefully around a few corners.

And eventually…

“There’s something here,” said Sugiyado.

“Well, this looks like trouble,” complained Princess Karin.

He couldn’t blame her.

There was a room.

A door led to a great hall.

The rectangular exit in the thick wall looked like a tiny tunnel by comparison. And there were two layers of doors to keep any air from escaping. It was a lot like a cleanroom in a semiconductor factory. That suggested something very important was stored inside, but they would be trapped like rats if they carelessly entered. If the door locked behind them, they couldn’t get back out. If the air was removed, they would be killed.

But that didn’t mean they could just avoid that room.

They were badly outnumbered here. The Brown Bears were impressive in terms of quantity and quality, so Sugiyado’s group had no intention of directly facing thousands of them. Anything would be a risk in the center of enemy territory. They had chosen to enter the Raging Gale because finding and attacking the heart of the sky fortress was their only way of overcoming that disadvantage.

They were here for some sabotage.

If they always chose the safer route, they would be traveling down the path of slow but unavoidable suicide. They would be trapped.

“…”

After some thought, the boy pulled out an air pressure kunai. He cut only the cable for the sensor related to the opening and closing of the thick metal door and then he jammed the kunai into the gap between the open door and the wall on the hinge side.

“Oniyuri, you wait outside. Secure us a way out.”

“Leaving me behind on our secret date is next level.”

“Oniyuri.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But if they can tear through that tungsten steel wedge to close the door, it’s going to be a wild rescue operation.”

It was just like her to imply she was perfectly capable of it. Even without her psychic powers, she was still a fire and explosives specialist.

“Princess Karin, will you stay or go? The risk will of course be greater inside.”

“Do not underestimate me, insolent fool. Destroying the Brown Bears is the only way to restore order in New Sapporo Domain, which I am ruling in my ill father’s stead. I will not leave that in the hands of an outsider.”

“Murakami.”

“Don’t worry. I will protect the princess.”

“Have it your way.”

Sugiyado and the other two stepped into the airlock with Oniyuri staying behind.

Of course, Sugiyado had a few different possibilities in mind. For example, this fortress was carrying weapons of mass destruction like the air-launched ballistic missiles and it was carrying a power source strong enough to keep the fortress airborne – likely a largescale nuclear reactor. And this was all directly above New Sapporo Domain. Whether the plan was to destroy those things or make use of them, they would have to be very careful.

However…

“What?”

In that moment, Sugiyado Souha realized he had been careless. In the ninja world, speed of movement and flexibility of thought mattered most, but he had allowed his mind to go blank and all his muscles to tense.

He was shocked.

He was a Hidden One, removed from the usual hierarchy of ranks, but what he saw here managed to shatter his pride.

6: The Two Teachers

Sugiyado found a large, vast space.

But more than that, it was a bizarre space kept so clean not even a speck of dust or single germ was allowed inside.

This was a location that could never exist in the natural world.

Perhaps that was why the master of this tiny world was also something one would never find in the natural world.

Was it a metronome?

The machine was less than 30cm in all. Its color was peeling away and its corners had chipped off. But it had to be more than a metronome. It had a few buttons and an LCD screen.

“Is that…?”

Princess Karin looked puzzled.

But not because she didn’t know what this was.

She had more to say.

“Lignum Vitae? The AI speaker used to manage training materials?”

“Who does it belong to?” plainly asked Sugiyado.

The name she had used was Latin, but he was pretty sure it referred to a wood known for being heavy and hard. It was heavy enough to sink in water and it was industrially used to make the bearings for ship propeller shafts.

He himself had instructed Ouka and the others over the internet. He was used to using electronics as a teaching tool.

“I don’t know,” groaned Princess Karin. “It is a Stonewalls device, but some of the details look different.”

“That suggests it was supplied by or borrowed from New Sapporo Domain,” said Sugiyado.

If Princess Karin didn’t know, the decision must have been made by a more powerful domain lord. Oniyuri had said the Abashiri ninjas who had built the foundation of the Brown Bears had continued to train themselves so they did not lose sight of who they were while living in disguise for so long. They ultimately hadn’t sent any personnel, but they may have provided some equipment as support.

“So is this the teacher supporting the Brown Bears’ training?” asked Murakami Michihiko.

He was a ninja, but he was also an inspector sent from Edo. He had been taught elsewhere, so he would have no connection to this.

It was only a metronome.

But it was the only thing that had listened to those ninjas when they found themselves in a dead end.

No.

It was a charismatic leader in the shape of an object.

That was Lignum Vitae.

For security guards and truckers who worked alone late into the night, an ordinary radio could be the greatest friend that helped them feel less lonely.

This did answer one question. For whom or what had this massive sky fortress been created? It was too over-the-top to simply hide the ninjas.

“Hey, insolent fool. Does this mean someone was using this Lignum Vitae to instruct the Brown Bears over the internet?”

“If this was functioning, it would be a possibility to consider. But its sensors are too worn down. It must have reached the end of its lifespan.”

“Then…?” asked the young man.

Sugiyado had only one answer to give him.

This was beyond logic.

“There’s nothing more to it. This is the end of the line. The Brown Bears are reliant on the broken machine itself.”

As soon as Sugiyado said that…

Clack, clack.

The metronome’s pendulum began to move even though no one had touched it.

It was like a cheap attempt at hypnotism.

“We were waiting for you, Atropos. You are the grim reaper who will cut down the fools who refuse to obey the path indicated by the thread.”

Lignum Vitae.

The voice sounded a lot like a young woman.

It spoke in an old-fashioned way, but had it been programed that way or had it decided for itself what the Brown Bears most wanted in a trainer?

And Sugiyado’s group could not forget they had been invited here. Someone wanted to show them something here for some reason. They could not simply accept all of the information presented to them here.

“Are you the boss here?”

“I am.” The faceless metronome answered Sugiyado’s short question with the same slow rhythm as before. “If, by that, you mean the top of the command structure built into the group known as the Brown Bears. However, that does not mean I have any real influence. As you can plainly see, my physical terminal is no longer fully functioning. I can no longer stop them with my words.”

Students who adored their teacher and a partially broken instructor.

That sounded unpleasantly familiar.

Sugiyado worded his next question more carefully.

“What is the Brown Bears’ objective?”

“I am no more than an item lent to them from New Sapporo Domain. Once I was returned, I was to be disposed of due to wear-and-tear and to make way for an updated version. They refused to allow that, so they chose to protect me. And to exact vengeance upon New Sapporo Domain for their decision, they are retaliating against the entire Hokkaido Area.”

“They want revenge for a machine?” Princess Karin sounded skeptical. “You mean all of this happened because of some old piece of junk!? Do you have any idea how much blood was spilled reaching this point!?”

“Princess.”

Sugiyado himself had lost a friend back in the Abashiri special prison. He was here now to fulfill his promise with that old man.

But.

Did Princess Karin really not understand what this was about? She had learned all of her ninja techniques within the Stonewalls organization and now she ran that organization while passing down those skills, but the master-apprentice relationship did not come in just one form.

Sugiyado understood.

But unlike the Brown Bears looking up from below, he knew it from the position of the adored. He knew what it was like to have your own students enraged by their master’s unfair treatment and to have that light the fuse.

Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, and Asagao. They each had a high aptitude for being a kunoichi, but when something had stirred up their sense of justice, they had strayed from the kunoichi path. And that had led to the series of incidents starting with the theft of the modular nuclear reactor. That incident was one of his worst memories.

It didn’t matter what form it took.

But after being worn down by the role forced upon them at the country’s largest special prison, the monsters known as the Brown Bears had found something to rely on. That something hadn’t been human. It lacked a face or body heat. But it had still supported their training.

It was something they could call their teacher.

An armed uprising.

Poisoning the domain lord.

The sky fortress.

Sugiyado didn’t think the scale would have grown to this extent if they had been acting logically. A standard negotiating tactic was to demand something beyond reason and then back down to a more realistic demand. No one was going to agree to this unreasonable situation. Even if the responders hoped to find a compromise.

This place was clearly decorative.

This was something beyond going through the logical process and clearing the hurdle as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Sugiyado sighed gently.

“Is that also why your base took the form of a sky fortress. The Raging Gale, was it?”

“That is only one of its throwaway names, but yes. I believe the Brown Bears intended it to leave their options open. This allows them to remain in the Hokkaido Area and make their influence known, but if that doesn’t work, they can swiftly defect elsewhere.”

“They seem pretty intent on one of those two options.”

“My students appear to have chosen a path after you discovered and entered the Raging Gale. They have chosen to flee. I assume they plan to depart as soon as you have been eliminated from the ship.”

He didn’t ask how she(?) could be so sure.

It would have been the Lignum Vitae herself who taught them that way. She would know exactly how the Brown Bears thought.

Which meant the full might of the Brown Bears would be moving to eliminate Sugiyado’s group.

Now that they had lost interest in taking indirect control of the Hokkaido Area and New Sapporo Domain, they would have also lost their interest in the life of Princess Karin as the temporary domain lord. And if they didn’t need the princess, they wouldn’t need to keep her around. Their Lignum Vitae teacher was their top priority. If there was any risk at all of her being destroyed, they would not hesitate to rush in and kill Princess Karin once she was discovered inside the ship.

However.

In a way, that was exactly what the boy wanted. Because this more or less ensured the safety of Ouka and the others on the surface.

“Now that they have determined there is no place for me in the Hokkaido Area, they will leave for their top defection candidate: the New Nagasaki Domain Dejima Float Trade District in the Kyushu Area. Or if that will not work, they plan to head to the continent.”

“That seems optimistic of them.”

“Yes. But exaggerating your chances is an effective means of commanding a large group. If you are too honest about the risks in the planning phase, it reminds them of the realistic problems they face and their morale withers. If anything, they have shown restraint in not making plans to escape to the moon.”

Meanwhile.

When comparing the broken metronome to Sugiyado himself, an unignorable problem arose.

Yes, what had he been thinking when he worked to resolve that incident started by Ouka and the others?

At the very least, he didn’t think they had wholeheartedly welcomed it.

“In that case…” he said.

“I am glad you understand,” said Lignum Vitae.

“I didn’t say I would grant your wish.”

“I do not want my Brown Bear children to die needlessly. But I cannot physically stop them with this body. I was very careful in who I chose for this task. Sending an army of inadequate fighters would only add to those children’s crimes as they create an even greater mountain of corpses.”

“Hey, hold on. Insolent fools, don’t leave me, the temporary domain lord, out of whatever it is you are discussing.”

“I invited you here.”

The metronome’s words never faltered, always keeping the same rhythm.

Was that because she was a mechanical program?

Or…

“I intentionally opened a hole in the Brown Bears’ defenses such that they would fail to notice it. All so those capable of destroying me could be guided here. They will prioritize my protection above all else. Thus, if they are freed from the burden of my existence, they will lose all purpose behind these needless actions and they will stop.”

“You have to be kidding, you piece of junk! Do you expect us to let those criminals go free if they stop now!?” shouted Princess Karin. “Not even Abashiri’s special prison is enough to hold them, which means they could escape any other prison with ease!! Killing them is the only way to protect the peace of our nation!!”

“I mean no disrespect, temporary domain lord, but I have constantly monitored their vital signs and mental state. The harsh environment of Abashiri and communication with those brutal criminals wore them down more than the documented numbers show. But it was the Domain Lords and the other rulers of the Hokkaido Area who demanded the ninjas be deployed just because the location had been lent to them. That is our sin. If we are to draw a clear line between victim and offender, I have no means of protecting you.”

“…!!”

“I am unwilling to compromise on this issue. Just like you have a life you must protect before all others.”

Princess Karin was speechless, but Sugiyado brought a hand to his forehead.

“So you want to stop the students by killing the teacher?”

“Correct.”

“Are you sure that will work? Let’s say a brother works through the night every single night to support his sick sister. Do you think the brother will thank you if you free him from that burden by killing his defenseless sister?”

“Wouldn’t he?”

Now he held his head in both hands.

The metronome’s pendulum was moving the same as ever.

Was this what you got with a processor that thought in terms of simple addition and subtraction? Lignum Vitae apparently would never consider the possibility of a single addition or subtraction leading to the destruction of the world. Was she also unaware there were things in the world which could not be added or subtracted?

But.

In that case.

“What do we do now?”

Murakami Michihiko’s question proved useful.

Sugiyado had needed that simple question to help sort his thoughts.

He slowly raised his head.

“My objective is to fulfill a promise with a friend. The Brown Bears are no more than a problem that cropped up in the middle of that. With that in mind, I have a question for you.”

“Ask,” said Lignum Vitae.

He breathed in and out.

If there was one thing that set this all in motion…

“Why did you attack that old man?”

“The attack on Abashiri’s special prison was part of an assault plan meant to retrieve me before I was disposed of and place me safely aboard this sky fortress. I am a target of adoration for the Brown Bears and the Murakami old man was the most skilled ninja in the prison when it came to the construction and maintenance of tools. He noticed what was happening before anyone else and he intended to destroy me to stop it all in advance. I speculate he made a show of being a model prisoner both to create a more comfortable living environment for himself and to contact me in the area the ordinary prisoners were not allowed. My calculations suggest he also knew how to destroy devices such that they are irreparable. If he had not hesitated for emotional reasons, none of this would have happened.”

“…”

“He was the greatest threat to their plan. That is likely the reason the Brown Bears took his life. The entire group feared that one old man more than New Sapporo Domain or the strategic antiair laser beam cannons. He made them tremble in terror.”

Did those words carry any real meaning?

That fear was nothing but a nuisance for the old man now that he was already dead. It did nothing to change what had happened.

But.

However.

(I see…)

That man had been something special.

His name would never go down in history and he hadn’t left behind any actual knowledge or skills. He had ultimately failed to prevent all of this.

But Sugiyado Souha reached a quiet understanding that none of the others noticed.

(I see.)

“Princess Karin.”

“What now, insolent fool?”

“I have mostly achieved my objective, but there is one thing left: completing the job that old man left undone. I can do that by ending this Brown Bears incident and preventing any further victims.”

“I don’t need you telling me what to do. You mean we need to destroy this piece of junk that makes people lose their minds, correct?”

“Princess,” cautioned Murakami Michihiko while Sugiyado sighed in exasperation.

“I know you want to punish them somehow, but if the Brown Bears lose Lignum Vitae now, there will be no stopping their indiscriminate rampage. I can tell because I was once in the center of a similar incident. Students will never compromise when something like that happens. I don’t know what power source keeps the Raging Gale airborne, but how much damage do you think they could do if they dropped the entire sky fortress on the city center?”

“This central ship is equipped with a total of 30 sealed contactless antihydrogen collision reactors,” explained Lignum Vitae. “The reactors harness the power of antimatter reactions and they are built to spacecraft standards.”

“…”

Princess Karin would have shaken on her feet if not for the young man gently supporting her shoulder from the side.

If something like that crashed, it wouldn’t just destroy the city below – most of the Hokkaido Area could be blown away.

“There you have it,” said Sugiyado. “And in an all-out conflict, it won’t end with that one attack. If you’re willing to set the entire Hokkaido Area ablaze to end this, fine. But if not, you need to find another way. Our goal isn’t to annihilate of the Brown Bears – it’s to eliminate them as a threat. Using ninjalike underhanded methods.”

“You expect me to slice off a portion of the land my father left with me and grant them extraterritoriality? Or just sit here and watch them escape overseas? Unacceptable! If word got out, every criminal and terrorist in the world see my domain as the perfect target and attack!! Because they would know they could get as much ransom money out of me as they wanted!!”

“I’m not asking you to do that.” Sugiyado turned toward the Lignum Vitae metronome which continued to keep perfect rhythm. “I will grant your wish, but I’m not saying it won’t hurt. There will be a hefty price. To show everyone, both here and elsewhere, that the ending wasn’t worth the cost.”

“That is fine. My primary objective is to stop the Brown Bears who have left my control and to eliminate the direct risk to the Hokkaido Area. This is all for naughtif the lingering influence of this incident normalizes terrorist attacks involving the bombing and abduction of the area’s citizens.”

“What are you planning?” asked Murakami Michihiko.

There were two sides to the Brown Bears.

First, as victims. They had been sent to Abashiri for the Shogunate’s convenience and forced to carry out harsh missions that crossed the boundaries of legality. Princess Karin had no way of defending herself there. They had a right to their freedom.

But.

Stopping there ignored their other side. As offenders. What happened at the special prison was a tragedy, but it did not excuse all of their actions. If their victim side was to be dealt with, their offender side had to be dealt with as well.

Meaning…

“There was always only one option here. The Brown Bears must be taught a lesson. A painful enough lesson that death would be preferable. One that shows everyone else that following in their footsteps would be suicide. It will be a lesson to them and anyone watching. It will only work if it makes every last Brown Bear regret what they have done until the day they die.”

7: Silently Creeping

“Little Crow 1, nothing to report.”

“Understood. Thank you for your scheduled check in.”

“Little Crow 2, nothing to report.”

“Understood. Thank you for your scheduled check in.”

“Little Crow 3, nothing to report.”

“Understood. Thank you for your scheduled check in.”

For the ninjas patrolling the main ship, the scheduled check ins were basic but important routine work. These days, even the police performed their duties with a camera in their breast pocket (although that was actually meant to prevent corruption on the job), but relying on machines like that created unique loopholes and vulnerabilities. Reliability increased considerably if there was at least one layer of old-fashioned analog security in the mix. This was an important job separate from the ninjas searching the ship.

…But no method was perfect.

No one was going to notice that this one guard was being forced to make his check in with Sugiyado Souha standing behind and holding a blade against his throat.

“Thanks for the scheduled check in, Little Crow 3.”

“Damn…you.”

The Brown Bears man, Little Crow 3, groaned a curse, but Sugiyado paid it no heed. He kicked the back of the man’s right knee to make him kneel and then Murakami Michihiko hit him in the back of the head with his metal flute.

“I’m only going to ask once.”

Bara would use a variety of tricks to trap a prisoner and convince them to talk, but there were plenty of more effective methods when you needed the truth in a shorter timeframe.

“Where is a Brown Bear stronger than you? You can just give their name if that’s all you know.”

For example, a blow to the brainstem.

A truth serum might sound like a type of advanced technology, but it was really just a way of using drugs to muddle the mind until they lost all discernment. Everyone has said something they wouldn’t normally when sleepy or intoxicated. The degree was different, but the basic principle was the same.

A similar effect could be triggered by forcing someone to go long periods without sleep, grabbing and shaking the head, or driving them to the verge of unconsciousness with a blow to the heart or back of the head. There were any number of methods. Of course, the slightest error could lead to death or permanent brain damage, so these were techniques only the best of the best could pull off.

However.

Once the effect was in place…

“Rh…bh”

Whether people were for or against something, they would picture the target in their mind before labeling them. Only then would they decide whether to say it or not or whether to be honest or not. But if that labeling process was broken, they would simply say what came to mind.

“O-Oomurasaki. Little Crow 4.”

“Murakami.”

The young man struck the Brown Bear’s head again to actually knock him out this time.

Oniyuri laughed with her ninja outfit swaying around her.

“My, my. That has to be as bad for the body as an actual truth serum. He might never regain his sense of equilibrium, you know?”

“Hmph. We should just kill him.”

“What did I say, Princess Karin?”

Sugiyado had let Murakami Michihiko do it as a way of blowing off some steam and this was how Princess Karin thanked him? He knew he couldn’t let her do it.

“We are ninjas. If we want to terrify our fellow ninjas, we can’t just kill them. A top rate ninja isn’t going to fear an armored samurai and they’re nothing but destructive power.”

“…”

“Do you get it now? If we want to overwhelm the rest of the ninja world, we need to stand out in every part of our field. The results are what matters. Slaughtering them all like mincemeat is about the worst way of doing that. Anyone can do that with a big enough gun.”

With that said, Sugiyado snatched the boxy radio from the Brown Bear’s jacket.

“Little Crow 4 is next.”

“Have you noticed the metal badge embedded in the shoulder of their clothing? You can’t see it, but I think it provides their unit and rank when hit by an ultrasound echo,” quietly pointed out Oniyuri.

Princess Karin, who was listening in, looked more puzzled than Sugiyado.

Thanks to her “puppy”, she was more familiar with ultrasound than he was.

“Then how did you detect it? You would need special goggles to visualize the sound, wouldn’t you?”

“My hair. If you pass light and sound through a regular lattice structure, it can be broken down enough for human senses to detect. You should learn how to do it.”

Oniyuri lightly touched her hands to the black hair worn up on either side of her head. It looked a lot like she was adjusting a pair of headphones.

Inaudible ultrasound and shockwaves could still wear people down. Since she specialized in flames and explosions, the high and low frequency waves capable of hindering a target’s focus were like familiar toys to her.

“Murakami, Princess Karin, Oniyuri. From here on, we’re gathering intel and operating covertly. Do not give us away.”

The Raging Gale sky fortress was extraordinarily large, but that didn’t mean it had space to waste. The labyrinthine narrow passageways were built to fill the gaps between the necessary equipment and the structural beams and pillars.

Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been possible to slip unnoticed past the ninjas on patrol.

But…

“Hmph.”

Sugiyado heard a rustling sound.

Princess Karin flipped around her junihitoe and swapped it around to bring a different design to the outermost layer. That was a form of variable camouflage. She was wearing so many layers that her clothing functioned as a portable closet. She could instantly select the optimal design for the current situation. Here, she became a large camouflage screen capable of covering Sugiyado and Oniyuri as well. They stayed by the wall of the narrow corridor as the patrolling Brown Bear turned the corner and walked past.

“(Oh, my. A hug from a pregnant woman is a rare experience. Do you think I could get some milk if I sucked these things in front of me?)”

“(Oniyuri, be quiet.)”

This was all meaningless if they simply slaughtered everyone.

They had to sneak around like shadows and swiftly defeat only the designated people without anyone noticing.

When Sugiyado spotted the back of who seemed to be their next target, he checked a few things from behind cover.

“She carries herself better than Little Crow 3.”

“The badge on her shoulder has a higher rank too.”

“That must be her. That’s Oomurasaki.”

From there, they simply repeated the process.

“Ugh!?”

“I’m only going to ask once. Who is a ninja stronger than you?”

They would get the name of an even better ninja, slip past all the security, and attack their next target.

Sugiyado Souha and Murakami Michihiko hurried out ahead.

There had to be thousands of Brown Bears in all, but only one of them stood at the top.

They would identify and eliminate that one.

Then they would vanish like they had never even been there. Because that was the ninja way. The message was simple: no matter how strong you are and no matter where you hide, we can take off your head at any time. We can lock onto anyone else who attempts this. If they didn’t take this that far, there would be no end to the conflict with the Brown Bears who wanted a place for their broken Lignum Vitae.

Ninjas were expert saboteurs.

If this battle was drawn out long enough, New Sapporo Domain and the entirety of Hokkaido Area would be worn down by it. So the Brown Bears needed to leave. And in a way that prevented any copycats.

“Sabotage is a means for a smaller force to defeat a larger one. It operates on fear and confusion. But that means a ninja’s illusions lose their power once their methods have been revealed and countermeasures have been developed. We will slay the Brown Bears here. By creating a poison that affects the entire organization.”

“Hey, Instructor,” gently interrupted Hidden One Oniyuri. “These surprise attacks are going to stop working soon.”

“True. Princess Karin, I want you to draw our target’s attention.”

It was Murakami Michihiko who gasped.

Princess Karin herself was simultaneously irritated and pleased with his overprotectiveness.

Sugiyado silenced the young man before he could say a word.

“I know, Murakami. You support her anyway you want. Or do you want to be the decoy while she supports you?”

“No. A support role is beyond her abilities. She doesn’t have the restraint. She would decide it would be faster if she did the main job herself and she would move out front.”

“How dare you, Murakami.”

“Oniyuri, you isolate the area so no sound escapes. You can use walls of air and temperature differences to prevent the soundwaves from propagating, or whatever method you like.”

And…

“That just grazed my neck, insolent fool! And after I deigned to act as a decoy at the request of a commoner like you. Do not forget that I am a princess carrying the blood of New Sapporo Domain’s lord!”

“Instructor, you need to do a better job of escorting the girls in your care. Just look at that cute dog-ear girl wagging her tail waiting for you. Are you really going to betray her expectations?”

“How dare you.”

“Our next target is Housenka. Mole 7.”

And…

And…

“Oh, dear. I may have overdone that one.”

“You damn monster woman. How is that Brown Bear even still alive after you hit her with that much firepower? I almost feel sorry for her. It would have been kinder to just kill her.”

“That’s enough, you two. Murakami, you need to break your bad habit of pretending you don’t exist when you would rather not be noticed. Our next target is Mermaid 1, Gekka Bijin. Be careful. We’re moving up a rank again.”

And…

And…

And…

“Are you the top of the Brown Bears, Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa?”

For the first time, they didn’t even attempt a surprise attack.

Partially because there was only so far they could get hiding their presence and sneaking up behind her, but this was also meant to be a benchmark. They needed to draw out the full power of this strongest kunoichi and break her fangs with no room for complaint. They needed to smash the Brown Bears’ morale by showing that not even their strongest member could win.

She stood at the highest point of the Raging Gale’s main ship. At the top of the tower containing all the many antennas, which was analogous to the bridge of a warship.

“Her?” Murakami Michihiko gulped with his metal flute at the ready. “That’s her?”

Ootsumekusa was around 16 or 17, making her about the same age as Sugiyado. Her long black hair was worn in a single long braid.

A solid mask with a dust filter covered the bottom half of her face, but it was not meant to hide her identity. She was a kunoichi – a ninja who used her beautiful face as a weapon. A standard ninja technique called the Sheltered Maiden hid a portion of the kunoichi’s face – the eyes, the mouth, etc. – to inspire the viewer’s imagination.

She wore a sleeveless Japanese-style shirt and skinny pants that showed off the curves of her butt and legs. That might look poorly suited for carrying hidden weapons and ninja tools, but that was only an optical illusion and there were plenty of hiding places, like below the collar or in her hair.

A metallic clinking sound came from her.

The ninja world demanded speed and silence above all else, so no one was going to wear metal armor. The sound came from her legs. Silver-shining jointed shafts surrounded her legs to support them.

The method was different from the springs implanted in Sugiyado’s legs in place of his ligaments, but the idea was the same. Those were meant to assist patients who could not walk on their own.

Why would she be wearing something like that?

What gap had she been trying to fill by adding those unnecessary artificial parts to her body? What had she been trying to accomplish?

“You went to a lot of trouble reaching me.”

The kunoichi named Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa slowly turned her head toward them and spoke with her voice slightly muffled by the mask. The mask may have been why her voice sounded huskier than her appearance would suggest.

“Our teacher can be selfish. But I’m sorry – I want to do whatever I can to assist her. Isn’t that what it means to adore someone?”

Her intense gaze wasn’t quite like Oniyuri’s when she had been controlled by her own psychic powers. This wasn’t someone enjoying the present because she had no future. This was someone who truly believed she could reach a twisted future. Ootsumekusa and the rest of the Brown Bears may have all been looking at the same thing but seeing something different.

Ootsumekusa had referred to her teacher as a “her”.

How did she view that broken metronome?

The instructor boy kept his eyes carefully on the enemy.

“It seems you’ve decided to defect.”

“As soon as you arrived on the Raging Gale. Our teacher’s safety comes first for us. And you have violated her sanctuary.”

The Brown Bears may have been able to protect the broken Lignum Vitae by remaining in the Hokkaido Area and establishing an indirect rule there. They could have captured Amamo, who looked just like the temporary Domain Lord, used her as a puppet, and killed the real Princess Karin.

The Brown Bears had been waiting to make that decision.

But Sugiyado’s group had tilted the scales too far in the other direction.

It was no longer viable for them to protect their beloved “teacher” by establishing an indirect rule of the Hokkaido Area.

So they had chosen to destroy everything and escape elsewhere.

To somewhere safe.

Sugiyado Souha let out a slow breath.

“Even if Lignum Vitae wishes to be destroyed?”

An odd scraping noise and orange sparks burst near Sugiyado Souha’s feet.

He didn’t even need to look down and check. He knew the composite armor meant to protect the especially important brains of the Raging Gale sky fortress had been split open.

It didn’t matter that they were more than 10m apart. She carried something capable of slicing right through Sugiyado’s group.

The sweet heat Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa gave off was joined by icy killer intent – creating a marbled mixture.

“I’m sorry. Our teacher is bad at making jokes. Please do not take her too seriously.”

A ninja’s ability to produce results greater than their physical body should allow did not come from mystical spells or carrying the blood of a monster in their veins.

They used the mood.

Thus, no one who lived in that world would be restrained by anything as simple as passion or malice.

Sugiyado sighed.

“I’m not interested in your beliefs. I’m here to keep a promise I made with a dead old man. This place is the last thing allowing you to continue harming New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area as a whole. Once I’m done here, I don’t care what you do.”

Princess Karin didn’t seem happy with that, but no one paid her any heed. And she wasn’t foolish enough to destroy the people and land her sick father left with her just to soothe her own emotions and pride. And the way he put that seemed to draw Ootsumekusa’s attention, just a little. Ninjas loved roundabout methods. It wasn’t a path suited for people who only read the surface text of an agreement and obeyed it as written.

Ootsumekusa considered it before responding.

“What are you asking me to do?”

“That’s simple,” immediately replied Sugiyado Souha. “Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa, leader of the Brown Bears, I am asking you to die. That will solve everything.”

8: Peak of Death

Their solid footsteps may have been their version of a starting gun. Because ordinarily, a ninja would silence their footsteps first and foremost.

That was a region of death.

They were aboard a sky fortress at an altitude of 3000m. One step over the edge would mean their death. But more than that, they were atop the bridge at the very top of the Raging Gale and that bridge was covered with enough skinny antennas to look like a bamboo thicket.

They used the antennas themselves as footing.

Sugiyado Souha and Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa.

Merely being there was reckless enough, but they also wielded deadly ninja tools.

Sugiyado Souha of course had his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais. They were installed with instant nitrogen foam cartridges that far surpassed the specs of a car’s airbag. When those forcibly opened the tungsten steel blades, they produced a maximum of 15 tons of force to pierce into and destroy their target from within. They were powerful enough to pry open a tank’s hatch.

Then there was Ootsumekusa, whose black braid swayed as she moved.

With a sound of distorting air, several metal antennas tilted diagonally after being sliced through below Sugiyado. The orange sparks blossomed only after a short delay. Ootsumekusa had no reason to provide a demonstration. Sugiyado had only managed to avoid the attack by pulling in an arm to intentionally shift his axis and give himself a spin as he leaped from one antenna to the next.

But what was slicing through those metal rods thicker than his spine?

“A sports kite!?”

“Soaring Bird. An ancient technique, right? Our teacher loves things like this.”

The sound like a broken flute had to be either carbon nanotube or cellulose nanofiber. Whatever it was, it had to be a special fiber made from carbon, not a simple metal. The ultra-thin wire was drawn taut and sliced through the air. She manipulated a highly optimized kite at this high altitude to send the wire wherever she wanted in order to sever Sugiyado’s head.

This was different again from a kusarigama or a whip. Nor did it wrap around his neck or catch on his legs from behind like a wire weapon normally would. Even severing wires normally had to catch on something like a tree branch or road sign, but this Soaring Bird didn’t need even that. The sports kite acted as the other end and it was flying wildly in the wind, so the wire was in constant motion.

The backs of Ootsumekusa’s hands were covered by metal tools.

The bending portions of the constantly-moving kite string all acted as solid blades. It would slice through anything it tangled around. That meant the Soaring Bird was a lot like an invisible sword dozens of meters long. In a group battle, it held the possibility of slicing horizontally through the entire enemy army.

Of course, ninjas could make anything into their weapon or tool. That was why a lot of ninja tools were things easily acquired on site, like grass sickles and kitchen knives.

Sugiyado was familiar with kites being used as ninja tools, but never as a weapon. As a practical ninja tool, they could be sent up as a signal when smoke signals couldn’t be used because fire wasn’t available. Or a camera and cable could be attached to one to use it as an air surveillance drone when you couldn’t afford to send out any wireless signals.

(Things have been evolving without me noticing. Nothing ever stays the same in the ninja world!)

“Sh!!”

“Your breath is escaping. You’re past your prime. I was hoping to show off my skill to please our teacher, so give me more to work with here.”

He was pursued by the husky voice muffled by the dust mask.

They used the blowing wind to change directions in midair.

Sugiyado and Ootsumekusa both soared through the frigid sky, taking unnatural courses a simple thrown ball could never emulate.

But in that short exchange, she had predicted his issue and pointed it out with as little action as possible. It was possible she had noticed the springs in his legs and bolts in his spine.

She sliced through all of the antennas standing in her way. The cuts were sharp and Sugiyado concluded it was best not to land on them. When a weight of 5kg felt funny and 10kg caused an explosion of pain, it was safest if he did not include metal armor in the soles of his shoes.

Thus, he took a different approach while soaring through the air.

He landed on one of the few parabolic antennas sticking up like a morning glory flower with its support pillar seemingly tangled in vines and he leaped from there. He performed a flip to avoid the attacking wire and flew toward a rodlike antenna sticking out horizontally.

He heard the parabolic antenna and its tangled pillar sliced through behind him.

Ootsumekusa hadn’t been slow to react there. The support pillar thicker than a telephone pole tilted toward him, scattering lots of high voltage sparks as it went.

The unpredictable wire was now joined by dazzling sparks. Sugiyado had thought he was analyzing the situation and escaping, but this told him he was being led around.

A dull clang interrupted.

That was Murakami Michihiko, but not his metal flute. He had more or less tackled the falling remnants of the parabolic antenna to knock them out of the way. The bright sparks were hidden and Sugiyado’s vision returned.

“You aren’t going to complain if we make this two against one, are you?”

“You are a ninja. I doubt you are giving me the accurate number.”

From Sugiyado’s position on the horizontal antenna, he could see Oniyuri and Princess Karin running parallel to them, jumping between different spherical doppler radars and convex transmission parabolic antennas.

A ship this size had a few antenna towers alongside the central bridge and steel ropes thicker than Sugiyado’s arm ran between them. Plenty of sensors and radars were attached to those. A lot like the flags strung up at a school athletics festival.

Ootsumekusa was aware of all that, but she still spoke through her dust mask.

“And that is fine with me. I have no reason to use only my physical body to fight.”

The sports kite’s ultra-thin wire sliced unnaturally through the air to approach. But that wasn’t the true threat of the Soaring Bird.

“Murakami!!” shouted Sugiyado before even jumping from the horizontal antenna rod to some other footing.

It was too late.

With a dull thud, the young man’s curled-up body wobbled in midair like he had been tackled. There were more than 3000m up, so a careless misstep would mean death.

“Drones,” announced Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa with a smile.

There was a silhouette much like a model plane more than halfway crushed by its own weight and speed. It was scattering lightweight materials, like aluminum or polycarbonate, but it had to be fairly sturdy. Think of it like a meter-long piece of metal flying in at 300 or 400 km/h – two or three times the speed of a professional pitcher’s fastball. Even with the protection of special ninja equipment using a spiderweb structure, you couldn’t take a hit like that too many times. Sugiyado was nearly defenseless, so even one hit would kill him.

The husky female voice spoke again with her black braid swaying.

Ootsumekusa had her feet atop an infrared jammer resembling a lighthouse.

“Soaring Bird is a based on a sports kite, but the winds will not always be favorable. But that only means I need the ability to alter the winds themselves.”

She wasn’t talking about controlling the weather over a large area. If she only needed to alter the wind direction within a radius of 100m, artificial walls would suffice. This was a phenomenon and technique seen frequently enough in building winds, windbreaks, and frost-protection coverings.

Several drones flew in circles around Ootsumekusa. She was like a queen bee. The kunoichi who covered the bottom of her face with a mask to give herself an even greater imagined beauty whispered from atop the central ship’s infrared jammer.

“Now, come for me. We have always been an army.”

This kunoichi had offered her love across the boundary between man and machine. She may have felt more comfortable with masses of metal and silicon watching her back than a flesh-and-blood ninja.

“Kh.”

Sugiyado needed to rethink his plan.

He threw an air pressure kunai from atop the horizontal antenna rod. Destroying the high-speed drone was meaningless since its wreckage would still be rushing toward Murakami Michihiko. So instead, Sugiyado hit the unbalanced young man’s right shoulder to send him spinning along a different course.

The drone just barely missed him while flying with the force of a lightning strike.

“Princess Karin, help out Murakami!!”

“Don’t expect me to thank you for that, insolent fool!!”

Princess Karin shouted back while jumping down from one steel rope of sensors to a lower one in order to collect her secret husband.

(That’s two. I need to do something later about the kunais that fell to the ground so far below.)

Sugiyado didn’t have time to watch what happened with the young man and woman.

He jumped from the horizontal antenna rod to one of the thick steel ropes containing so many sensors.

The Brown Bear made her own move in the meantime.

She had her sports kite and the drones that looked a like model airplanes. And the long blade made from the taut wire hadn’t disappeared from the stage either.

Sugiyado had used up a beat to redirect Murakami’s body. That allowed the Soaring Bird’s deadly wire to get that much closer to Sugiyado’s torso as he stood on that suspension bridge. As sharp as that thing was, it didn’t matter if it hit his vitals or not. No matter where it hit him, it would slice right through and then this battle was over.

Sugiyado responded by throwing an air pressure kunai.

It was easily deflected and the wire blade capable of slicing through a bomber hit Sugiyado in the side of the hip.

“Gh!?”

But.

The groan did not come from the boy.

It came from Ootsumekusa who was operating the wire.

“Why didn’t it cut you!?”

“Try to figure that out yourself. Are you really going to say ‘I don’t know’ in front of your favorite teacher?”

Sugiyado leaped to the side and landed on the lightning rod attached to the support pillar for the steel ropes. While making sure to dodge out of the way of the drones trying to tackle him from a blind spot.

To Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa, the state of her trump card mattered more than the apparent state of the overall battle. She gently shook Soaring Bird’s entire wire. The slight vibration traveled along the wire like a tin can telephone, but the wire made a cracking sound at one point.

She glanced down at the spool covering the backs of her hands and then spoke from behind her dust mask.

“You froze it? You used the same method as blood or oil on a sword.”

“An altitude of more than 3000m is about the same as Mount Fuji. By placing just a bit of moisture on the tip of the kunai and hitting the wire, it isn’t hard to freeze. Also, skiing and skating don’t work so smoothly because you are on ice. You can only slide like that because of the thin layer of water created from the friction melting the surface.”

He didn’t need to freeze the entire length of Soaring Bird’s wire. And freezing just the point that was likely to contact him wasn’t difficult.

He jumped from the lightning rod back to the sensors and said more to Ootsumekusa while running along that elevated space that was too unreliable to even call a suspension bridge.

But…

“This gives me a defense against your wire. And if the same method can always stop an attack, then it isn’t worthy of being called a ninja technique.”

“Kh.”

“But what about you? Can you kill me by repeating the same thing? If you can’t, then I can close in on you and eventually find a chance to throw a kunai.”

She still swung the sports kite. But while running aft from the bridge, Sugiyado didn’t stay focused on the wire he knew how to deal with.

(If she was foolish enough to try the same thing again after that, she wouldn’t have survived this long.)

Several invisible attacks approached from multiple angles, masked by the obvious sound of the wire. That was probably air. The drones flying around the area were ninja tools capable of locally altering the direction of the wind. If used correctly, they would be able to transform ordinary air into a gust so powerful it felt like a physical blow or even a sharp vacuum blade.

“!!”

The thick steel rope carrying the sensors was suddenly sliced through. Sugiyado couldn’t afford to fall with it, so he jumped to a thin support pillar.

Something had happened.

And it wasn’t over yet.

Accurately dodging every one of these attacks wasn’t possible.

The Fierce Fang air pressure kunais couldn’t shoot down vacuum blades and rupturing the instant nitrogen foam cartridges could only do so much. Not to mention that he only knew she was making some invisible attacks here. He wasn’t confident he knew how many were left and where they were.

Ootsumekusa really was Ootsumekusa.

She was the kunoichi who stood at the top of the secretive Brown Bears. It would be one thing if he had time to think up a countermeasure, but in a one-on-one fight with no preparation time, she could repel even a former Hidden One like Sugiyado Souha.

Which was why Sugiyado didn’t hesitate to give up on that.

He shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Oniyuri, a little help!!”

“Don’t make me wait so long next time, Instructor.”

He heard sweet, bewitching laughter reminiscent of the smell of rotting fruit.

A moment later, an explosion blasted away the frozen air at an altitude of 3000m. But instead of red, it was pure white, like a blowtorch.

It occurred higher up than Sugiyado.

While rattling the high-altitude sky, Oniyuri floated with no footing below her feet like some kind of mirage.

“You’ve heard of hot-air balloons, I assume. The heat of flames has been used to alter the density of air and create lift for hundreds of years. And the latest technology can take that principle to this level. You can’t defeat me with an air hammer, vacuum blade, or any other silly trick.”

Oniyuri whispered while gently coming alongside Sugiyado without landing on anything herself.

Ootsumekusa clenched her teeth while using one hand to grab onto the dangling sensors.

“A plasma jet.”

“Yes, a mass of 6000 kelvins, more than three times the temperature of a blast furnace. Around the same as the surface of the sun, I believe. True ninja techniques do not need the assistance of natural phenomena. You need to tear down the natural environment and replace it with your own.”

Sugiyado Souha and Sagami Oniyuri.

They both landed on the narrow supporting pillar for the moment.

They were both Hidden Ones, a rank beyond even the Elite Ninjas at the top of the official rankings.

They held nothing back.

If Ootsumekusa managed to survive this, it would in fact boost the Brown Bears brand considerably. Their mechanical teacher’s plan to break their spirits and get them to surrender would fail miserably.

“Controlling the air means more than neutralizing your hammer and vacuum blades,” announced the boy.

“Oh, no.”

By the time something occurred to Ootsumekusa, it was too late.

“Oniyuri, destroy that sports kite disturbing the air. Ootsumekusa can’t wield that ultra-thin wire without it!!”

This was a high-risk, high-return situation for both Sugiyado and Ootsumekusa. If the Brown Bears’ strongest kunoichi was defeated in secret, the rest would lose their will to fight. But if Ootsumekusa emerged victorious after all this, it would encourage the Brown Bears.

Killing them would be the only way to stop them.

But Sugiyado Souha jumped to the same string of sensors as Ootsumekusa and charged toward her while she tried to keep her distance.

The battle was fought on the metal ropes and sensors strung up high in the sky.

Metal loudly clashed with metal.

The parts on the back of Ootsumekusa’s hands had looked like a spool and controller for the ultra-thin wire, but they also protected her hands like knuckledusters. They were a type of emeici or wind-and-fire wheels. She wasn’t broken yet. She could still win by smashing Sugiyado’s skull with a cross counter.

One sent out an air pressure kunai on the right and the other sent out a fist on the left.

But they had to focus on their opponent’s other weapon.

No…

“Down, Soaring Bird!!”

Atop the sensors lined up like athletic festival flags, the husky voice erupted from behind the dust mask.

A high-speed drone reinforced with aluminum or polycarbonate dropped toward Sugiyado’s head like lightning. Oniyuri was interrupting the air hammers and vacuum blades, but she could not negate the weight and speed of the drones themselves.

A dull clang rang out.

A hammer on the end of a long string swung around to gain speed and crashed into the high-speed drone.

“I can’t believe I had to go out of my way to save that insolent fool!!”

Princess Karin was shouting resentfully on some footing a level below them, but she was free. She needed full use of both hands to swing her hammer like that.

So.

Where was Murakami Michihiko who she had been assisting?

“Tch!!”

Ootsumekusa clicked her tongue. Her right fist, protected by the knuckleduster-like ninja tool, had been stopped by someone else. Specifically, by a metal flute. A weapon that looked a lot like a metal pipe had been forcibly shoved in the way.

“Weren’t you listening?” said the young man from close up. “I asked if you weren’t going to complain if we make this two against one!!”

Teeth-clenched Michihiko’s return must have been a surprise. The Brown Bears’ strongest kunoichi hadn’t meant all that much with her voice command to the mechanical drone. She had only wanted to distract Sugiyado long enough to smash him with her fist.

But she had been stopped.

And the battle advanced to the next move.

Ootsumekusa’s air hammers, vacuum blades, high-speed drone tackles, and even her two fists had been stopped.

But the same couldn’t be said for Sugiyado Souha.

His right air pressure kunai had been stopped by Ootsumekusa’s fist, but he had another. He still had the Fierce Fang in his left hand.

“Goodbye, Kiritsuma Ootsumekusa.”

“Kh.”

A certain old man had shown him the solution.

He had been framed for a government official’s crime and received unwarranted criticism, but he had used that to preserve the peace.

He may have lost his life at the hands of the Brown Bears, but even as he died, he had said nothing about that crime. He had held his tongue and taken it with him. He had only left behind hope for his grandson.

That Sugiyado could carry on.

The series of events set off by that old man’s death had to end here and like this.

“Ninjas don’t do things like those classy samurai. So get a little dirty and save everyone with your defeat!!”

In order to knock her out through her bulletproof gear, he sent the full power of his air pressure kunai into the brutal kunoichi’s chest.

“I…” A faint muffled voice came from behind the dust mask. “I only…wanted to create a meager home…for our teacher.”

The black braid girl slumped forward.

They were on an unstable array of sensors above a 3000m drop toward New Sapporo.

But Sugiyado’s back wouldn’t let him carry the defeated kunoichi.

That was a cruel but absolute rule.

The boy slowly exhaled.

And he spoke.

“Oniyuri, you carry her.”

“You’re too kind, Instructor.”

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