# 022. Cute Kunoichis

## 01. Volume 01

### 001. When The Cute Kunoichis Spied on Their Teacher's Secret

### Illustrations

- Cover

## Prologue

Now.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “ninja”?

Maybe you are picturing shuriken, kunai, smoke bombs, and cloths made to blend in with the wall. You might even imagine someone clasping their hands in front of their chest and reciting some strange incantation.

But none of that is accurate.

A ninja has electronically-controlled multipurpose goggles and an outfit made from bulletproof and bladeproof spiderweb fibers, chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel or electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders.

That was considered the bare minimum these days.

In the abandoned B3 underground plaza of a large train station, Sugiyado Souha, a 17-year-old boy with a scar on his face, was crouched down while holding a metal cylinder the size of a large water bottle with lots of holes in the side. He wore a half-sleeved dress shirt, loose pants, and a large scarf. It was all old and worn out.

The boy was facing two fighting groups of kunoichis.

On one side was Kuhou Ouka. She was a girl of 13 or 14 with her long chestnut hair worn in twintails. She wore a special fiber outfit that fit snugly to her young bodylines and she held a hunting gun with two stacked barrels, a bayonet, and a multipurpose sight that resembled binoculars.

On the other side was Shirazaya Guren and Suiren. Those identical girls of 16 or 17 had semi-long blonde hair. They could only be distinguished by the white or red extensions attached next to one of their ears and by the flower decorations in their hair. The two slender girls each held a special-steel ninja sword and a kusarigama.

They both wore skintight full-body suits with kimono-like attachments worn on top to hide what would otherwise show through. They way the fluttering cloth drew the eye every time they moved may have been one of the weapons long used by the female ninjas known as kunoichis.

“…”

None of them needed to say anything at this point.

Without any signal, all three girls moved in perfect unison, as if they had stolen each other’s thoughts. With their very first step, they kicked off the ground, flew through the air, and kicked off the station’s pillars and walls to flip around.

Each time Ouka swung her bayonet, liquid nitrogen or flamethrower blades would fly out as if to slice across the entire plaza, but the twins Guren and Suiren still pressed closer with their sleeveless white kimono tops and short pleated skirts giving them a cheerleader-like silhouette. The flashy and astonishing attack was a bluff. The stacked-barrel hunting gun could select between types of ammo, so the twins used their special-steel blades to accurately cut down the bullets meant to actually hit them. Their point-blank range exchanges continued from there. Both sides were only young girls.

Their spiderweb ninja suits were several dozen times as strong as steel, but a direct hit from one of those killing moves could still slice their slender bodies in two. After all, they had trained their bodies, chosen their equipment, and come here for that purpose.

Sugiyado could not stand it any longer, so he shouted to them.

“Stop this! Keep this up and you’ll die!!”

Both sides briefly came to a stop.

No, for a brief moment, Kuhou Ouka and Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s killer intent was diverted elsewhere.

“Who do you think we’re doing this for in the first place!?” shouted those cutting-edge kunoichis. “And whose side are you on anyway!!!???”

Ugh, thought Sugiyado Souha while looking up toward the sky.

He lamented to himself while confirming the sensation of the sealed poison gas container in his hands.

How did I find myself in this mess?

It all began just a few days earlier.

## Chapter 1

### 1: A Kunoichi, Twintails, and a Lecture

The rectangular plastic package was just a little larger than the postcards that seemed so nostalgic nowadays. It was colored a reddish orange and the thick text on the front said “Happy Churn”.

Sugiyado Souha, a 17-year-old boy with a scar on his nose, was seated in one corner of a small single-room apartment. He was gesturing wildly as he desperately tried to argue his case. He wore a half-sleeve dress shirt, loose pants, and (even indoors) a long scarf around his neck, but it was all very uncomfortable after absorbing so much nervous sweat.

He was speaking to a twintail girl standing past the Happy Churn box with her hands on her slender hips. She wore a baggy long-sleeved white sweater and a miniskirt adorned with pink pleats. It was certainly a cute outfit, but if she moved any closer, he was pretty sure he would be able to see the cute underwear within that miniskirt. And do not ask how he could know it was cute without having actually seen it. You are reading too much into this. He definitely had not seen it and he double definitely had not seen the small ribbon on the front!!

“No, wait, Ouka. There is a perfectly good reason for this.”

“Your room is already so messy it’s a miracle you haven’t gotten yourself sick, so you have to stop sneaking this junk food, Sensei!!”

“Junk!? You take that back!! Happy Churn is my manly soul food!”

“Oh, the very thought of it scares me. Sugar, carbs, chemical seasonings, artificial preservatives, and artificial coloring. Snack foods are an incarnation of evil intent on destroying the world, so I will be throwing out every last crumb! Even if it will probably all be back in a few days knowing you!!”

“Not so fast! Happy Churn powder is a mystery seasoning with a secret recipe, so you have no basis for your critique, Ouka!!”

“Please don’t eat mystery substances full of who-knows-what, Sensei!!”

“Oh, no. At this rate, cute Ouka could turn into a truly monstrous woman as she ages. Any course corrections need to be made now. Strike while the iron is hot, as the saying goes. You can do it, 14 year old! You have time to fix this!!”

“You were the one that told me to watch out for sugars and fats because a kunoichi’s body is a crucial asset.”

He was simply reaping what he had sown.

Sugiyado dripped with an unpleasant sweat and turned his head like a broken fan to avoid looking her in the eye.

“I-I’m a guy, so I’m not a kunoichi?”

“Shall I carve that into your grave, Sensei? (Smile)”

“No, no, no! But if I’m being entirely serious, things are different between a retired instructor like me and someone like you who is still sent to the front lines to battle the knights and musketeers who arrive by sea and air.”

“Sensei!!”

“You have every right to be angry, but that is a historical fact. I already put in the work, so let me pack on a few kilos now.”

“I…” Ouka kept her hands on her hips but also pouted her lips like a disobedient child. “I refuse to accept that you have retired. I mean, no one can defeat you, not even Bara or Hoozuki. And that includes me.”

“I am honored that a Shogunate-approved Elite Ninja thinks so highly of me.”

“…”

Ninja techniques might seem old and busted.

But the arresting techniques and martial arts adopted by the police and militaries of different countries were generally based on the ancient and traditional martial arts of that country or region. In Eastern Europe, that meant wrestling. In Western Europe, that meant mixed martial arts with an emphasis on grabbing and pinning techniques. In South America, that meant an alternate version of jujutsu. In China…well, that one goes without saying.

The modern reliance on ninjas was a sign of the times. Foreign warships and aircraft carriers were stationed uncomfortably close to the isolationist Shogunate and the mechanical knights and musketeers aboard those ships only had to be sent the go sign. Those things could not be dealt with by traditional means, so new tactics had to be built from the ground up and that required individual fighters to adjust their own tactics on the fly. While karate, judo, and kendo received more attention, the necessities of the modern age had led to a resurgence in a different but equally ancient form of martial arts.

Even if they were reliant on modern technology, their techniques were still built on a foundation of martial arts to bring about a bizarre evolution in the traditional methods. This evolution that had developed to combat cutting-edge foreign weapons was known as Strategic Martial Arts.

“But you must understand that you are only talking about direct sparring matches fought on the limited field of a training ground and with a time limit. That has no bearing on what would happen in a real battle.”

Sugiyado remained seated on the floor and winked while tapping his fist on his lower back like an old man.

“I have three bolts in my spine and springs to make up for the torn ligaments in my legs. I’m far from helpless, but my spine feels funny when I lift something weighing 5kg and it explodes with pain when I lift something weighing 10kg.”

Of course, if that was really true, his spine would explode from the inertia of high-speed movement or when he blocked an enemy’s blade, yet that did not happen.

In the end, it was a complicated mix of his old wounds and psychological symptoms.

Knowing it was only in his head made his inability to get over it all the more frustrating. Any doctor he asked would likely tell him it was not that simple, but that would not be enough to fix his stubborn pride.

“You want to know how to defeat me? It’s simple. Make constant attacks with projectiles while endlessly falling back on a wide-open field. As long as you aren’t relying on thick and heavy bulletproof equipment, that will be enough to wear me down and kill me. I can’t dodge things forever, so my focus would falter at some point.”

“That’s nonsense and you know it, Sensei. We’re Elite Ninjas ranked above the standard High, Middle, and Low hierarchy, but you’re one of the Hidden Ones ranked even higher than that. No one even knows how many of those there are!!”

“Ouka, we are not samurais or the Shogun. What is victory for a ninja?”

“Kh.”

“What is victory for a ninja, Ouka?”

“To use every means available and follow any path available to achieve your objective no matter what. To swiftly and surely create a foothold for the rest of the army to advance without getting bogged down in matters of personal glory.”

She looked like she was silently cursing herself for being able to rattle off that definition.

Sugiyado Souha smiled bitterly at how good a student Kuhou Ouka was.

“Real battles are cruel and you don’t get to complain that something ‘isn’t fair’. If you’re carrying a bombshell, of course someone is going to poke at it. So if you carry a bombshell that could ruin the entire army’s timetable, you will be kept away from the battlefield. It is a perfectly sensible decision.”

He slowly exhaled and stood up while she bit her cute lip and said nothing in response. He was glad she was so worried about him, but this was his life and she did not have to carry these problems for him.

He placed a hand on her small head and smiled.

“Don’t let something so insignificant shake you, Ouka.”

“How is this insignificant, you dummy?”

“Even when you don’t think it’s affecting you, the enemy might sniff out the feelings lingering in your heart. You can never predict what will be the dividing line between life and death. If you don’t want to be forced into retirement by some unexpected turn of events like I was, then you need to stay strong.”

Those words were entirely meant for the girl named Ouka, but that also meant they contained no comfort at all for Sugiyado himself.

“But that’s what makes it all the more frustrating, Sensei.”

“That part is an entirely psychological issue, so you have to overcome it on your own.”

He sighed and lifted his hand from her head. The short girl looked over somewhat regretfully, but he was not the type to be drawn in by his excellent student’s sex appeal (although in her case, it was more of a protective desire). He turned his back on her and waved as he left the room.

For a while, the twintail girl clasped her hands in front of the flat chest showing through her tight sweater as she stared at the door Sugiyado Souha had left through, but then…

“Ah!? I was supposed to be lecturing him, but he somehow twisted it around into a quiet goodbye! Sensei!!”

### 2: The Floating City of the Shogunate and a Daimyo Procession

Your efforts are undeniable.

We have confirmed the extreme chaos on the scene at the time.

But the fact remains that your injuries prevent you from carrying an injured comrade. No matter how skilled they might be, someone who cannot protect the lives of their comrades in arms cannot be placed on the front line.

Please understand.

“…”

Ouka was one of the Elite Ninjas considered the strongest in active duty, so she would find him immediately if all he did was leave the apartment. He alternated travel routes in a complex pattern to eliminate any trail to follow and blended into the crowds of people.

(Really, this is like a pleasant stroll for me.)

This much exercise was not going to detonate the bombshell in his back. Theoretically, anyway. But while carrying a bombshell like that, he ended up worrying about it even when he should not have to.

He was weak.

He did not avoid admitting to himself he had a handicap. He could not rid himself of his concerns, unease, and even fears when doing something as simple as this. No matter how jokey he might seem on the surface, this was something he could not let his students learn about. He knew it was pathetic keeping secrets from those so close to him, but even instructors had their pride and dignity they wanted to protect.

He had left to escape Ouka’s lecture, which meant he did not have a set destination in mind. So how was he to kill some time? He might b a ninja, but he did not perform any flashy backflips or create clones of himself. He waited at the light for the large pedestrian scramble like anyone else would and he lost himself in thought while watching a line of vehicles cross by in front of him.

However, these were not ordinary cars or trucks.

Two large white police motorcycles took the lead, various bodyguard and escort vehicles were next, and a black luxury car bearing the large family crest of a samurai family followed that.

The police motorcycles were blasting an announcement from their speakers while driving quite slowly (which had to be difficult with motorcycles).

“A special alert is in effect. We know this is an inconvenience to you all, but please do your part to facilitate our official business.”

This was known as a Daimyo Procession.

The term Sankin Kotai was no longer even used these days, but not because the mandatory policy no longer existed. It was just that no one considered it worth arguing about any longer. Modern meetings could be held remotely with a single internet line, but the Shogunate still insisted on direct meetings on the pretext of safety. And of course, the funding for such meetings came from the annual taxes paid by the people living in the New Yokohama Domain.

There must have been some frustrations because people had stopped bowing their heads when they encountered a Daimyo Procession of late. Some young men in the area were aiming their phone cameras toward it and a small girl was eating a corndog while holding her mother’s hand, but none of the bodyguards got after them.

However, there must have been a coordination mistake this time.

The large monitor covering a department store wall was brightly and loudly spreading a wide range of information unrelated to the Daimyo Procession.

“New Yokohama Domain, the reclaimed land known as the modern Dejima, is a unique intersection point with many foreign cultures within this country’s isolationist policies, so it is also a land of many strange gourmet surprises! For example, here we have yaki udon and a pilaf sharing the same plate with a line of shumai running down the center to divide the two.”

“The age of a single OS’s monopoly has come to an end. We in the Kyushu University Computer Machinery Alliance have brought together domestic hardware with a brand new operating system that is estimated will increase the GDP by…”

“Breaking news: Several ships have been detected in the ocean off of the Pacific coast. They appear to be carrying Kingdom knights who plot to steal our data, but the unusually great number of aircraft carriers has led the Shogunate to announce…”

“Happy Churn!! X Day draws nigh! Strap your helmets on tight, everyone!!”

(The world is sounding as dangerous as ever. And what was that about everyone’s beloved Happy Churn?)

Sugiyado Souha prepared to take a mental note about the one topic he could not afford to miss out on, but then the screen switched over.

“In response to the dangerous signs at air and sea, the Tenshukaku at the center of the Shogunate is preparing a conference attended by all Daimyo with more than 500,000 koku of land as they will be the foundation of any regional defense. With the outstanding skill of the great 52nd Shogun Osaie at work…”

High officials in their formal dress were lined up in a large hall where a single tatami mat probably cost as much as a commoner’s entire house.

And in the very, very back sat a single figure.

The Daimyo Procession must have cost a fortune, but it paled in comparison to this.

Sugiyado Souha gave a look of pity toward the family crest on the luxury car, but he was still mostly thinking of Happy Churn. And then a bewitching voice reached his ears.

“Oh, dear. If it isn’t, Sensei. If you make Ouka wait too long, you will lose your chance to apologize, you know?”

A floral scent wafted over to him.

She was tall for a girl but still shorter than Sugiyado. This was a sexy girl with long red hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls and a dress so bold a red it almost looked dyed in blood. The buns on either side of her head may have been a floral symbol. She did wear a kanzashi, but she still had a mostly Western appearance. She looked splendid enough to make an appearance at an evening party or on a theatre stage.

The fact that someone like this had blended into the background until now was all you needed to know to see her great skill.

“Oh, Bara.”

Sugiyado whispered without moving his lips and without looking back. He kept his eyes on the opposite red light and the luxury cars of the Daimyo Procession.

When he carefully studied the reflection in the highly-polished cars, he could indeed see the beautiful kunoichi standing behind him.

“You’re getting better. I thought I had hidden my presence better than this.”

She was 18 which meant she was older than him, but he still ended up speaking like her superior.

But the red ringlet curls girl did not seem to mind.

“Only because my specialty is in disguises and deception instead of direct combat. Knowing how to disguise myself means knowing how to see through other people’s disguises.” That star of the stage giggled while crossing her arms in a way that lifted her large breasts up from below. “Plus, these techniques are all things you taught me.”

“You have already made them into your own techniques. I have nothing left to teach you there.” He relaxed his shoulders. “So where are Hoozuki and Asagao?”

“They went shopping to buy some ingredients for tonight.”

“Hm? Hold on. What are you four starting now?”

Something seemed to dawn on him after he asked that. This explained why Ouka was so upset about him eating snacks. The problem was not with the Happy Churn itself; she had been behaving like a mother refusing to let her child snack before dinner.

“Forgive her, Happy Churn. My student lashed out at you unfairly, but I know you have a big enough heart to laugh it off like an adult for my sake.”

“I’m pretty sure Ouka’s problem is that she likes you so much she’ll even get jealous over your fondness for an inanimate object.”

“But this is a problem. I was thinking of killing some time at a family restaurant or burger shop since I have nowhere to go.”

“That would only add fuel to the fire, but I won’t stop you if you are the kind of ‘expert’ who enjoys seeing a cute girl erupt at you.”

“What do you even want from me?”

“Oh? I like you a lot too, Sensei.”

She dropped a bombshell with a straight face. They were student and instructor and he wanted to complain about the kids these days, but Bara gave a mischievous smile and toyed with one of her ringlet curls using nail-polished fingertips. That was enough to squish her large breasts together from the side with her arm, so he really, really wanted to complain about the kids these days.

Kunoichis were taught to distract their opponents with their bodies, but the scent of nectar coming from Hanasawa Bara was especially strong. If she transferred in, she could probably bring down an entire prestigious girl’s school on her own.

“Now, Ouka’s ‘like’ is a much narrower kind of thing, but mine is much broader. I absolutely love the general atmosphere when you, Ouka, Hoozuki, Asagao, and I are together.”

“But…just to be clear, isn’t that atmosphere in trouble? If Ouka erupts, won’t that beloved peace of yours crumble away?”

“My, my. Who ever said the atmosphere I like is a peaceful one?”

That was the end of it.

The parade-like Daimyo Procession finally left. The pedestrian light turned green and the waiting people began to move. That girl in a bright red dress had been by his side a moment before, but now she was gone.

However, he did hear a giggling breath. Just as he realized she was still close by, he felt a soft touch on his cheek.

It was a maiden’s lips.

Only a thick floral scent reminiscent of a red rose’s petals remained in his nose.

“So if necessary, I am willing to throw in some sparks or add fuel to the fire. Just like this.”

Now she really was gone.

He shook his head side to side and then started across the pedestrian scramble a little later than the others waiting.

### 3: Fierce Fang

(I should probably see how my shoulder is doing while I’m at it.)

With that thought, Sugiyado Souha decided on a destination. He chose a place with very few visitors even in the shopping district. That was hardly surprising when it was a parking garage that had been waiting in vain to be demolished for quite a while.

There were no official dojos or training organizations for ninjas like there were for samurai sword fighting. Ninjas had to construct their own training grounds to train their own bodies and minds and to keep themselves honed so they would not forget what they had already learned. Of course, using private property would mean leaving your real name in the official registries and they could not exactly put out a big sign saying “Ninja Village”, so they generally borrowed other people’s land. But if they sensed anyone approaching, they had to remove every trace of their presence before they were found and then search out a new location.

A ninja’s agility was their selling point.

Unlike the samurai or warrior monks, they worked best when they were free to move without any restrictions.

In order to keep their decisions sharp when it really mattered, it did not hurt to continue training on a daily basis.

This (abandoned?) parking garage was not interesting enough to become a hangout for local delinquents and it did not have any stories creepy enough for people to visit for a test of courage, so it was perfect for his needs. He had been using it for nearly a month now.

But that was not necessarily a good thing.

(If I stay too long, I end up gathering too much stuff. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me when I do need to withdraw.)

“Now, then.”

He had passed a thick rope through one of the old tires he had found somewhere and stacked up in here and had it hanging from one of the pipes overhead. Even without giving it a push like a pendulum, the irregular vibrations from the trains running nearby made it shake in unpredictable patterns.

(20, 30, no, I need to reach 35 for a passing grade with a straight line shot.)

He measured the distance with his steps and then faced his target from a distance.

35 meters.

A handgun bullet could fly a distance of around 180 meters, but opinions were still divided on the range at which it could actually hit a target or kill a fleeing opponent. Some said 30 meters and others insisted it was less than 8 meters.

During an indoor battle with lots of cover, a range of 35 meters was so-so.

He did not time the shot himself. Ninja battles were not like samurai duels, so he used the noise from outside the parking garage as a cue.

(Yes, I can use the squealing of a car’s tires for today.)

Once he had defined his terms, it was time to wait. It might come one second later, or he might have to wait an hour. It was also possible he could wait all day and never hear it at all, but he could not let that distract him. Ninjas would perform sniping and assassinations, so it was crucial that they performed all their tasks with equal proficiency at all times. If nothing happening was enough to get you down, you could never survive a life of lying next to a sniper rifle on a mission that only ended when further orders came in.

Do not let success or failure affect your state of mind, he silently told himself. It was not uncommon to only have a 2 second opportunity during a mission that lasted 96 hours. But if you could not produce your best possible performance during those 2 seconds-

Squeal!!

Whether someone had slammed on the brakes or the gas, the squealing of tires cut off his thoughts. His arms rose seemingly all on their own and moved to his lower back. He pulled two kunai from below his half-sleeve dress shirt. He crossed his arms to throw both kunai without a moment’s delay.

Even the rustling of his clothing seemed delayed.

Unlike stick shuriken, kunai were not thrown with the vertical rotation seen in throwing axes. The broad shape of the blade itself sliced through the air like wings to provide lift and stabilize its flight. Instead of throwing them with the arm like in darts, the entire body was used as a spring to place your full body weight on the end of your hand, so it was more like throwing a solid paper airplane than throwing a blade or ball.

Sugiyado Souha’s mind was entirely focused in that moment.

A nearby train shook the tire dangling from the rope, but that did not matter. His side-throw was perfectly accurate. It felt like he was watching the kunai follow a line already drawn out in the air. Missing would have been the real shock here. The old tire was drowning in an ocean of equations that would have the average mathematician struggling in front of a whiteboard, but the two kunai flew right into it.

But that was all they did.

“…”

It appeared to have been the thick low-pressure tire for a large truck, but his kunai caught on the edge more than stab in. It was much harder than a sandbag, but this still meant the kunai were hopelessly deficient in penetrative power. They could never finish off a ninja wearing thick bulletproof equipment. In fact, the average boy in a T-shirt and shorts would walk away alive.

“What am I doing, dammit?”

As much as he claimed he wanted to live an easier life now, he could not forget the feeling of the ninja gear in his hands and he kept practicing with it day in and day out. Or rather, he feared he was continuing to grow weaker after already deteriorating quite a bit. He could not relax unless he made sure he still had what it took. And that bad habit was only getting worse.

Also, he had not moved a step.

When a frontline ninja decided they would defeat an opponent, they would do so with the very first attack. Because that was safest. Yet now he could not even take out an old tire swaying irregularly from the roof. The world had grown awfully cruel of late.

“Cruel…”

Was he referring to the three bolts in his spine? Or to the skills that he used to take for granted that were slipping from his grasp? Either way, his complaint was misguided. Who did he have but himself to blame for the decline in his skill? Also, complaints held no power on the front line. Those battles were fought based on the assumption that your name would not go down in history. Outsiders had no chance to decide what was right or wrong and the losers were left behind as nothing but corpses.

If you could not keep up, you had to step aside.

If you were even one step short, you were still too slow to survive.

That was probably why he had trained those girls. He had lost his wings and could no longer fly, but he still selfishly sought a place for himself in the great expanse of the sky.

“Goddammit,” he quietly cursed while looking away from the old tire pendulum that displayed the miserable result of his efforts.

But a moment later, there was a loud pop.

That loathsome donut-like silhouette was shredded from within and blown away.

Would anyone who saw that have realized what just happened?

Sugiyado had thrown kunai at it. They were alloy ninja gear made by sharpening one-handed gardening trowels. However, the two things that fell to the concrete floor were both shaped differently. The silver blades had a groove along the central line that opened up in parallel lines to the left and right like a U-shaped tuning fork.

These were special weapons that’s blade included a rescue device used to force open car doors and that’s grip included a nitrogen rapid-foaming agent used in airbags. It could provide a maximum pressure of approximately 15 tons. If the very tip managed to work its way into a gap in the target, it could even break the lock of a tank’s hatch and force it open.

So in an urban warfare environment where he had plenty of cover he could use to approach, this allowed him to single-handedly defeat a unit of tanks.

And ninjas never looked for fairness in their battles, so they would lure the target into the perfect environment beforehand.

It went without saying what happened when you stabbed one of those into a personal bulletproof jacket or into actual flesh and blood.

These were Sugiyado Souha’s true fangs.

These were the Fierce Fang air pressure kunai.

They did not require weight or speed to destroy a target. As long as he could throw the tip into the gaps or joints of the target’s armor, the deadly equipment would be shredded from within. That meant he needed accuracy and nothing else. That old wolf had received critical injuries to his spine and the ligaments of his legs, but this was his last resort for staying relevant that he had found after struggling and crawling through the mud for so long. Of course, these were not in general(?) use for the simple reason that they were of own his handmade design and he had not shared the plans.

“…”

He slowly walked over and reached into the shredded tires to collect the two Fierce Fangs that had their beaks open in parallel, but then he sighed.

“I am no longer worthy of the Hidden One title.”

Only bitterness colored his face.

“These are like training wheels on a bike. No, they’re like adult diapers, dammit!!”

### 4: Ninja Teacher

Sugiyado Souha still had a lot of time to kill.

The unexpectedly slow passage of time hinted at something quite bitter rising up within him.

He was afraid to head back to the apartment where Ouka awaited him (even though it was his apartment). Since snacks were apparently not allowed, he visited an internet café inside an ordinary multi-tenant building. Due to the aforementioned prohibition on snacks, he did not take a bite or sip of the complimentary curry and drinks.

“Call it a rebellion against capitalism.”

Despite the country’s isolationist policies, New Yokohama Domain was treated similarly to Dejima, so the internet there had access to the outside world. In that sense, these cramped spaces separated out by partitions were a luxury item. You could connect to the national internet with your phone, but one of these desktops with a static IP linked to New Yokohama Domain land provided a lot more freedom.

A glance at the browser’s home page showed the same online news headlines he had seen on the street earlier and a few eye-catching ads.

“Sword training available in vibration, water pressure, blowtorch, and other varieties.”

“If you want to be a cyber professional, look no further!”

“Unlike in the samurai families, bloodline is irrelevant in the merchant families. Seeking people interested in immediate lessons on advanced economics!!”

The internet moved at such a rapid pace the word “inundated” seemed apt. That had greatly changed how education worked. Old-fashioned schools were used to provide a foundational education and foster communication skills, but that was not enough to get by in the modern age. Even if you graduated from elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and even graduate school, you still needed an edge if you wanted to receive a job offer.

So in parallel to ordinary schooling, students would carve open a future for themselves by learning some kind of specialized skill. Some self-proclaimed expert who appeared on talk shows had named this troublesome age the Age of Dual Education and made a killing on the business book he was selling.

The true identity of that dual education was the long-distance education system that made use of the internet.

In the modern age, anyone could be a student and anyone could be a teacher. The classmate studying alongside you in the ordinary classroom could be teaching something to the girl in the seat next to you.

Depending on the initial agreement, the teacher did not even need to reveal what they looked like, so it was entirely possible a baby-faced student could be using the internet to teach a special class to an elderly teacher at their school.

These classes were classified as “practical hobby lessons”, so they did not need to be registered with the existing educational agency, no teaching license was necessary, and the nationally designated curriculum could be entirely ignored. However, that had allowed the classes to branch out along a much wider breadth of subjects. There were as many individual education courses as there were stars in the sky, so some had started saying the ability to determine which ones would be useful for your future was a kind of talent.

When a class was useful, it was incredibly useful, but when one was not, it was a complete waste of time.

Among all those was the following ad:

“Modern ninja lessons available.”

It was thanks to the modern era that such a class could be advertised so bluntly. Of course, not just anyone who responded to the ad would be given lessons. They were given a background check and an interview via video chat first.

The ad was not one of the larger ones and a red warning label said “class full” over the banner.

(They’ve been working on the front line for a while now, but I guess they’re still technically registered as my students.)

It was obvious when he checked through an external internet connection, but that explained why he did not have any new hopeful students contacting him. That robbed him of his livelihood, but would complaining to Ouka and the others really accomplish anything?

If he was lucky, they would cutely insist they could support him.

If he was less lucky, they would claim he had no choice but to return to his life as a ninja.

“What a pain. My rehabilitation costs are not cheap, but I’m stuck with some selfish girls who refuse to move out.”

Now, did the boy realize how happy he looked as he said that?

The phone sitting next to the mouse vibrated. He grabbed it before it vibrated itself right off the edge of the desk and saw a familiar name displayed on the screen.

“What is it, Hoozuki?”

“Everything is ready, so you can head back home now.”

“Again, ready for what?”

Since the classes were supposed to be held online, physically meeting each other like this could be seen as a slight ethics issue. There was no definite punishment for it, but it may have been similar to how contact between an organ donor and recipient was frowned upon.

It probably made matters worse if his students were breaking into their instructor’s home and plotting something there. He was just about ready to complain about “kids these days”.

(That room really does have thin walls, so I need to get them to restrain themselves.)

With that oddly realistic thought, he paid full price despite not touching the drinks or curry and he left the internet café.

Just as he stepped outside of the multi-tenant building, he was greeted by the loud rumbling of an engine.

Countless Calamities, a reddish off-road motorcycle, was stopped on the other side of the guardrail and a tall and slim girl sat atop it. Dirt bikes were generally made small and lightweight, but this one’s engine had clearly been forcibly swapped out. The rider was a cool beauty with a long silver ponytail and she was not wearing any sort of helmet.

Unlike the other members, Hoozuki always walked around in her ninja outfit. She wore a one-piece swimsuit held in place with various belts and she wore the baggy pants commonly seen on male ninja outfits. The motorcycle made it look something like a bizarre form of riding suit.

She rotated her hips to look his way while remaining on the motorcycle, which showed off the feline litheness of her spine and shoulder blades.

“Hoozuki, you stand out too much! You have padding inside there, so you can silence all that noise, can’t you!?”

“A silently-running motorcycle would stand out a lot more, if you ask me. Besides, you should praise my sensible restraint in not driving Ouka over to see you.”

Nantou Hoozuki gave him a thin smile. She was not the type to express her emotions much, but that was definitely a belligerent and sadistic smile.

He had a bad feeling about this.

“H-Hoozuki?”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“Um, all of that killer intent is about as obvious as handing me a business card and introducing yourself.”

“Like I said, praise my sensible restraint in not driving Ouka out here.”

The Countless Calamities off-road motorcycle suddenly lost its shape below the slender girl. A tremor of a warrior’s joy ran through her spine. Her black, gray, and orange ninja outfit seemed to symbolize pleasure signals. She was serious. Before the motorcycle could take on a different form, Sugiyado rushed into a nearby alley. The last glimpse of it he got showed her holding it at her hip like a cannon instead of like a vehicle.

“Hey!! I taught you mock battles aren’t allowed in residential districts, didn’t I!?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re ninjas, so we have to be ready to work silently and swiftly no matter the time or situation, right? Yes, like performing an assassination in the middle of a national parade without batting an eye. Oh, I just can’t wait. You’re the only decent sparring partner I’ve had since becoming an Elite Ninja!”

He heard the final metallic click as the motorcycle completed its transformation into something else. A chill ran down his spine.

“And you need to isolate your target before negotiating with them, right? Wasn’t it you who taught us not to let the police or a Shogunate ninja near them?”

He just barely made it around a narrow corner before hearing a loud boom that shattered the concrete wall.

“~ ~ ~!?”

Would anyone believe that had been done by less than 50g of special steel?

It was a shuriken.

A number of types existed, but Nantou Hoozuki used one called a combination cross shuriken. It folded up like a pair of scissors, so it could be spread out to form a cross shuriken or folded up to form a stick shuriken.

However, throwing one of those by hand would not be enough to break a concrete wall.

“Technique 1.”

(Is she still using those lazy names!? And this means she actually used the motor, doesn’t it!?)

He could not get a surprise attack in on a projectile-wielding enemy just by moving around horizontally. And optical clones made by scattering a transparent powder were useless in such a narrow alley. A single sweep of the weapon would cover the entire space.

Modern ninja techniques were not magic.

They were only an extension of sleight of hand. But that made them the perfect kind of trickery and technological technique to thoroughly fool the people who boasted that they only trusted their own eyes. It was said to be an ancient yet cutting-edge martial art that could continue to grow as long as technology continued to advance.

(In that case.)

Sugiyado looked all around and spotted the drain spout and external air conditioning unit attached to the filthy building wall.

They were a little too high up to use as footing, but he did not hesitate to draw a Fierce Fang air pressure kunai from his back and throw it straight up. It lodged itself between the wall and the air conditioner, the nitrogen opened it up, and it easily tore through the screws and bolts.

Then he only had to grab the falling weapon and use the lowered obstacle as footing.

“Hh!”

He could not afford to forget the fundamentals.

He stepped on all the things sticking out from the wall to jump about 3m straight up in the blink of an eye. A moment later, Hoozuki leaned around the corner and fired. A fearsome horizontal downpour of steel flew through and blew away the trashcan and rusted bicycle that stood at about the same height he had been a moment before.

By then, he had already backflipped and gotten a look at Hoozuki’s weapon from directly above.

It was indeed Countless Calamities. However, its complex transformation had placed the two wheels against each other so they could launch the shurikens at ultra-high speed like a pitching machine. It could launch a maximum of 3600 per minute and a single shuriken weighed two or three times an anti-material bullet. To avoid the noisy sonic boom of breaking the sound barrier, she intentionally kept them at subsonic speeds. The video she had submitted for class had shown them obliterating training makiwara that were made to be almost as tough as a human torso.

That extraordinary firepower would be enough to defeat a Kingdom musketeer with brute force alone.

(But that unwieldy weight is your weakness, Hoozuki!)

“Wait, above!?”

The belts wrapped around her body audibly strained as she quickly tried to re-aim the wheel shuriken launcher upwards, but it was too late.

In the ninja world, life and death were determined in the blink of an eye. Sugiyado already had his Fierce Fang air pressure kunai in hand. He inserted a replacement cartridge below the grip to complete his preparations.

He descended like a lightning strike.

He landed right up against her lithe back. The kunai was inserted below her exposed armpit like it was a thermometer.

That device could pry open a tank’s hatch with 15 tons of force.

Her spider web ninja outfit could block a rifle bullet, but it would not fare so well if he activated his kunai here.

“See, you haven’t gotten rusty at all, Sensei. I’m glad I could see this.” Nantou Hoozuki remained motionless now that her opponent was behind her, but she smiled thinly. “And I’m glad Ouka didn’t get to see this. If she knew you were risking your health by using your old skills, she’d probably hunt you down and kill you.” Sugiyado said nothing in response.

And after brushing off her casual comment, he thudded his fist down on the top of her silver ponytailed head.

“Owie!!”

She dropped the large gadget held at her hip and tearfully held both hands to her head while her silly voice sapped the tension from the air.

The sensuality of combat quietly burning at that cool beauty’s core instantly dispersed.

“Don’t give me that. How many times do I have to tell you not to fire so many shurikens!? Projectiles increase the risk of leaving some evidence behind, so you need to avoid them unless absolutely necessary!! Not to mention that your combination cross shurikens are especially complicated to make, so you might as well be leaving your calling card behind!”

“Ugh, but you used your Fierce Fang.”

“A kunai was originally a digging tool. And in modern times, it’s used to break open doors, much like a crowbar. I will admit you see them thrown a lot in ninja dramas, but I keep a careful count of how many I’ve used. So, Hoozuki, tell me exactly how many you fired and where? Right now!”

“Well, um.”

Strict Sugiyado breathed a heavy sigh when his student started fidgeting.

“Enough. I get it already. I was counting for you, so let’s go collect them all.”

“Eh!?”

“You were adjusting how much each shuriken was opened so you could control the air resistance and alter their speed and course, right? Did you think I didn’t know you did that?”

“Y-you really are amazing, Sensei.”

“We aren’t diplomats with special protections provided by international treaties, so recovering and destroying evidence is a life-or-death issue. Doing what is necessary should not make you ‘amazing’,” he spat out. “And you were the one who broke that bicycle, trashcan, and other things, so disposing of them is your responsibility. …Besides, I can’t lift anything that heavy.”

5kg felt funny and 10kg made his spine explode with pain.

So if a comrade collapsed in front of him, he would be unable to carry them to safety. A selfish coward like that could not be allowed on the front line.

### 5: The Four Girls

Once they had finished cleaning up, they finally got moving.

“Why do we have to be so thorough? Normal people would never know what they were looking at.”

“Don’t get sloppy in training, Hoozuki. That will only lead to sloppiness in actual combat. I taught you your subconscious is always less disciplined than you think it is, didn’t I?”

“Yes, yes.”

The cool beauty transformed her wheel shuriken launcher back into an off-road motorcycle and tossed Sugiyado a C-shaped plastic device she had been toying with in her hand.

“Place that behind your neck and it will function like an airbag. A gyro sensor will monitor the angle of your head and protect it with a balloon bag in case of emergency. It’s single-use, but convenient.”

He flipped the device over in his hand and spun it around.

“You do love your gadgets, don’t you? I bet you like looking through electronics catalogs.”

“Of course I do. Spec tables for new products are humanity’s greatest literary achievement. Everything needed to spark the imagination is found there. Not even Shakespeare or Doyle managed to invent this.”

“Hmm, so you’re some kinda weirdo?”

“I won’t criticize your zealotry for the Church of the Happy Churn, so how about being a little more openminded, Sensei?”

What a silly thing to say. Sugiyado Souha was openminded enough to accept any person of any age or gender. For that reason, he was not about to say no to riding behind a female motorcycle rider.

He might as well have been embracing the feline litheness of her spine and shoulder blades and he placed his hands around her hips. He had to watch himself to make sure he did not end up hooking his fingers around the belts binding her body.

“Nh.”

“Let’s not make weird noises, Hoozuki.”

“You’re acting calm, but your heartrate doesn’t lie, Sensei. But I’ll take that as a sign that you see me as a woman. I was a little worried about that, but I don’t have anyone else to ask about it. Heh heh heh.”

He cleared his throat, but she must not have meant it as criticism. She provided him the feminine softness and warmth of her back while she set Countless Calamities in motion.

They rushed through the city while the engine rumbled so deeply it almost sounded like a bass instrument.

“I heard you were out shopping with Asagao.”

“I doubt Ouka would give away the surprise, so that must have been Bara. She really has this annoying fetish for causing trouble while pretending to be an innocent bystander.”

“Call it an annoying ‘habit’, Hoozuki.”

“But anyway, I sent Asagao back to your room with the food. So this is my second time out here.”

Hoozuki made sure the others could not even hope to threaten her position as the most mobile of the four. She was a kunoichi whose transformable off-road motorcycle functioned as a means of transportation and a weapon. She could, in all seriousness, leap from rooftop to rooftop or lift up the back wheel and spin on the spot to swing it around like a roundhouse kick. If she was going tightrope walking, she would be safer roaring across on Countless Calamities than spreading her arms to balance herself on foot. That machine was becoming a part of her body.

“Can you stop your ponytail from slapping me in the face?”

“Bear with it. Not even I can make the air resistance go away.”

“Fine, but I’m afraid I’ll eat it if I’m not careful.”

“You’re into some surprisingly kinky stuff, Sensei. Ouka would probably freak if she heard. Y’know, swinging her twintails around like a den-den daiko.”

It did not take long at all to arrive at the rundown apartment despite how far from the station it was.

After arriving back in familiar territory while the roaring engine probably triggered some noise complaints, they found an extremely small girl seated out front.

Her glossy black hair was worn in a bob cut, making her look something like a symbol of Japan, but she was dressed in a white military uniform with a tight skirt. She was 11 years old. With her appearance, any police officer that spotted her would 100% mistake her for a runaway child and drag her away.

“Asagao?”

“Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!!”

Her small head popped up and she started swinging her baggy sleeves around while screaming. She sounded like someone who had spotted a ship on the horizon after a month stuck on a desert island.

“You’re mean, Hoozuki! And you too, Sensei! How could you leave me all alone in that horrific cage!?”

“All alone? What happened to Ouka and Bara?”

After Sugiyado hopped down from the off-road motorcycle’s back seat, Shizukuma Asagao stomped her long boots on the ground and practically tackled him to cling to him. She looked up at him with a tearful and confused face that was not quite angry and not quite relieved.

“I’m saying you left me all alone while those two were emitting crazy auras at each other! It was so scary! Ouka was looking forward to surprising you and Bara went ahead and spilled the beans, so they were just glaring at each other in the scariest way!!”

He had no idea what was waiting for him inside, but he could tell it was not going to be pleasant. And with Hoozuki’s roaring engine, those two would know he was back home, so running away now would be silly.

Expressionless, Hoozuki held a hand out to Countless Calamities and transformed it into something like a rectangular bag.

“Asagao, you specialize in manipulating and dealing in information, right? All you have to do is use your conversational skills to guide them back to a calmer state.”

“Ugh. If you think that’s remotely possible at this point, then take a peek in there. Unlike the rest of you, I’m purely a scout, so I can’t actually fight. It’s a miracle I survived this long here.”

Incidentally, changing shape did not change the mass, so the bag making Nantou Hoozuki’s shoulder blade crawl alluringly below her skin weighed more than 90kg. Her every step caused a strange creaking from the rundown apartment’s stairs. Again, Sugiyado felt like complaining about kids these days.

“Sensei, you’re my Onii-chan, so it’s your duty to protect me.”

“Don’t think you can use that argument to get any New Year’s money out of me.”

Shizukuma Asagao was more than half serious as she tearfully clung to the side of his hip. Since her small head was in the perfect position, his hand naturally ended up petting it while he sighed.

Kuhou Ouka.

Hanasawa Bara.

Nantou Hoozuki.

Shizukuma Asagao.

The four of them really were like precious gems. Sending them out into the world as proper ninjas may have been even more impressive an achievement than anything Sugiyado Souha had done during his time as an active ninja.

Now, could he think of any way to peaceably end a face-off between those Elite Ninjas?

“No, that’s just not possible. Okay, Ouka, Bara! The only solution here is for you to grow up!! I’m making adults out of you right here and now!!”

When he threw open the door and made that announcement, he did indeed see Kuhou Ouka striking an intimidating pose and Hanasawa Bara looking like she was enjoying herself.

However, the chestnut twintails girl showing off her undeveloped bodylines and the red ringlet curls girl crossing her arms to lift up her enormous chest were not fighting to the death using legitimate ninja techniques.

“You want to ‘make an adult out of me’ in this tiny, filthy room, Sensei!?” (Ouka)

“And ‘the two of you’? Does that mean it’s at least going to be a threesome!?” (Bara)

(Um, uh oh.)

He realized too late that he had phrased that last part poorly. Asagao’s warmth had silently left the side of his hip and he could hear the clanking transformation sounds of Hoozuki’s Countless Calamities.

He recalled what he had read in some textbook or another.

Q: What is needed to bring multiple opposing forces together?

A: A common enemy.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbwahhhh!?”

His screams were not going to convince the girls he was not in fact a pervert.

Four active-duty Elite Ninjas attacked him from four different directions at once.

### 6: The Hotpot Party Begins

How many times had he narrowly avoided death tonight?

But after Sugiyado Souha was left in worse shape than the exterior of the old apartment building, something was thunked down in front of him.

“Oh, a hotpot.”

“What kind of reaction is that!? See, Bara, this is what happens when you tell him in advance!!”

“I never said anything about a hotpot.”

Hoozuki had come out and told him all the ingredients, but he kept his silence like a ninja should. Some truths were better left hidden.

“Sensei, I couldn’t help but notice the sad state of your diet. This was a party-size recipe, but it can be made into a single-serving vegetable hotpot as well. You have a small pot for stewing udon in your closet, so fix this for yourself from now on. …Surely you aren’t going to claim you’re so pathetic you can’t even stew something in a pot. Right, Sensei?”

It looked like this recipe was boiled in water. She also added some chicken broth, but she apparently did not like using a powdered chemical seasoning for that.

Silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki expressionlessly tilted her head.

“How did you manage when you were an active-duty ninja? You must have had to gather ingredients on-site and cook outdoors.”

“You’re on active duty now, so I know you know the answer. Official Shogunate spies receive such thorough logistical support that it never felt necessary. The deployment team would give me as many combat rations as I wanted.”

“Those might as well be big chunks of chemical seasoning. I’ve never been able to even finish the ones I’ve been issued.”

“And if worse comes to worst, you can always catch a snake or a rat. There are animals everywhere, from the city to the jungle. Cook it enough and most any meat is edible.”

“And what about infectious disease, Sensei!? Learning to cook like a normal person is a lot easier than showing off your superhuman skills there!!”

Meanwhile, the hotpot on the portable stove had apparently finished cooking. White steam blew from the small hole on the top, so Kuhou Ouka lifted off the thick lid while using a cloth in lieu of a potholder.

“I swear I will bring your diet up to normal human standards. Here you go, Sensei.”

“You didn’t have to do this, you know? But thanks.”

After receiving a serving in a bowl, he started with trying a sip of the clear broth. Next, he ate some of the well-cooked cabbage and chicken meatballs and enjoyed the texture between his teeth.

After swallowing, he gave his thoughts.

“It’s surprisingly normal.”

“Are you saying the home cooking a girl made especially for you is on the same level as a snake or rat crawling through the ditch!?”

“I’m saying it’s a normal amount of tasty.”

“Kh, what does that even mean based on your standards!?”

After all, he had revealed his tastes to include snakes, rats, combat rations, and Happy Churn. The sample set was too bizarre to draw any real conclusions.

“Let me see,” said curvy young Bara, cool beauty Hoozuki, and small Asagao while they used serving chopsticks or a ladle to move the hotpot’s contents into their own bowls. And after trying some…

“I see. That is very normal.” (Hanasawa Bara)

“Yes, I see what he means about it being a normal amount of tasty.” (Nantou Hoozuki)

“Normal. Very normal.” (Shizukuma Asagao)

“Stop calling it that! You’re making it sound like it should have been more surprising or something!” (Kuhou Ouka)

Skinny Ouka grew a bit tearful, but she should have been more observant. No matter what the others said, they were not slowing down in their consumption of the hotpot. They were even fighting over the serving chopsticks and ladle.

“Why are the chicken and the fish both made into a paste?”

“Ouka can’t help it. She’s a ninja teacher’s pet who wants to turn all rice into riceballs and all meat into meatballs.”

Hanasawa Bara squished her large chest between her upper arms as she held her chopsticks and bowl and her comment made still-growing Kuhou Ouka poke her index fingers together in front of her chest.

“B-but that’s what Sensei taught me to do. What’s wrong with doing what your teacher told you to do?”

“While it does take a lot of work, it helps cook the meat more evenly and helps you digest it more easily. For example, if you make meatballs out of the frogs or rats you catch, they really will taste like chicken, so-”

“D-do not talk about that right now!! You’re going to make me feel like I’m eating something else!!”

“?”

Time seemed to fly, which may have been all the proof anyone needed that Kuhou Ouka’s hotpot had been a success.

It was soon time for the finishing touch.

Youngest Asagao spoke up as part of the shopping team.

“Hoozuki and I got in a fight in the supermarket over whether to go with udon or rice soup, but we ended up settling on rice soup. If you use a package of white rice, it’s just as easy to make.”

“Wha-!?”

The shocked party was red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara. She had apparently expected to finish things off with some kind of noodles, be it ramen, udon, or champon.

“Th-this can’t be happening. While the broth doesn’t pack as much of a punch as with sukiyaki, this water mixed with chicken broth is pretty powerful, so everyone knows you follow that off with noodles that are merely coated with the broth, not rice that soaks it all up! Hoozuki, you should have fought harder. No, you should have called me up so I could come running and join the fight!!”

“Oh, Sensei. I’ll be shutting the lid and letting this cook, so it will take a bit of time.”

Ouka ignored the harsh critic who was only interested in the eating side of the equation and she shut the clay pot’s lid with a smile.

“How long will it take?” asked small-faced Shizukuma Asago while she kicked her skinny feet below the low table.

“Cooking it won’t take long at all, but you need to shut off the heat and let it sit afterwards so the rice can soak up the broth, right?”

Cool beauty Nantou Hoozuki explained that while raising her arms and stretching her back in an alluring way. A much lazier time had just set in. With nothing to do, Sugiyado reached for the remote and turned on the fairly small flat-screen TV.

“Welcome to our documentary on modern ninjas. The Shogunate uses its isolationist policies to protect our nation’s advanced technology, such as ultra-miniature processors using molecular wiring, modular nuclear reactors which can be transported by train, and printers that can mass-produce the world’s most complex and detailed currency. But behind the scenes, there is conflict with other nations, most notably the Kingdom. Today, we will be shining a spotlight on that unseen backstage.”

Bara laughed.

“Imagine if the truth about our secret units really was broadcast to everyone’s living rooms like some kind of quiz show.”

“This is necessary.” Sugiyado toyed with the remote in his hand. “When they surround a construction site with tall walls, they will intentionally make one panel transparent. Because everyone can rest easy when they can see what’s going on inside. This is the same. A perfect secret force like you see in the movies would only worry the people, even if they aren’t doing anything wrong. The CIA is the best example there. They’re the world’s largest intelligence agency, but everyone knows their name. On the other hand, no one actually knows what they’re up to. …For people like you who protect the country in ways you can’t explain to the average person, it’s crucial that you can make everyone feel like they’re in the know even though you haven’t revealed anything at all.”

“Not just people like us.” Kuhou Ouka pouted her lips in a way that made her look childish. “For all of us. That includes you.”

“…”

He did not respond.

He hoped they could see his hesitation and conflict in the fact that he did not simply laugh it off and lie.

Now and in the past, he was one of the Hidden Ones who could not be ranked by the usual Low, Middle, High, and Elite system.

“Oh, shouldn’t it be done now?”

Shizukuma Asagao’s eyes widened on a small face which was further emphasized by her bob cut. Ouka sighed before deflating her puffed-out cheeks and going along with it. Sugiyado knew what a kind girl she was.

“Then I’ll drop the beaten egg in. Just a little longer.”

However…

“I know this is sudden, but I’m feeling kind of full.”

“That does happen when you wait a while after eating.”

“This is why I told you to go with lighter noodles instead of this heavy rice soup! Urp.”

“Can you all quit complaining when you didn’t lift a finger to help cook!?”

Young Ouka lightly clenched her teeth in frustration, but the eaters would generally eat whatever was placed in front of them, even if they were complaining all the while. Taking the food away from them would only inspire more complaints, so it was best to just ignore them.

“Here, Sensei. Eat up.”

Ouka made sure to at least serve Sugiyado. While she went all out in serving him, she also had the resolute eyes of a girl who was not going to overlook a thing.

But when she handed him the bowl full of rice soup, it felt surprisingly heavy. It was like she had handed him a whole apple.

“Oh.”

“What was that surprise directed at, Sensei? That might seem trivial, but it is actually very important.”

The twintail girl smiled, but since it was a forced smile, she must have been worried already. She may have noticed the excessive weight herself.

To escape the pressure from directly ahead, he used his chopsticks to take a bite.

“Huh? It isn’t that heavy at all. It’s perfectly edible.”

“Did you think I was making you something inedible!? I wasn’t so hopelessly flustered that I boiled up some plastic! Could you please give a thought to how your comments will affect a maiden heart, Sensei!?”

Her previous worries led her to talk awfully fast, but her face was bright. She must have been breathing a sigh of relief that he had actually accepted it. She kept switching between her “student” and “big sister” identities.

“Huff puff. Yeah, it really is edible.”

“I would still prefer udon next time, but this is good enough I suppose.”

People had a tendency to look down on people when it was their turn to be the critic, so it was best not to take the things they said too seriously.

Once they had finished off every last drop, rice soup time was over and the laziness had returned.

Sugiyado Souha really did bring his hands together in thanks.

“Thank you for the meal.”

“You’re welcome, Sensei. This is what they call human food.”

“Yeah, it’s not bad.”

“It scares me how little this seems to have affected you. To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a rare treat! You should be making sure to eat three proper meals a day!!”

“Which is why I’m so thankful.”

Red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara’s large chest rose and fell in a sigh while she thought to herself and cooled her heated body with the breeze entering through the window.

She and cool beauty Nantou Hoozuki whispered to each other.

“(Hey, Hoozuki. Should we assume Sensei never learns his lesson because living like this gives his caretaker an excuse to visit him regularly?)”

“(I doubt he’s doing it on purpose, but I also doubt he cares if that is the result. In fact, this should be a lot more entertaining if we never point that out.)”

### 7: The Final Moment of Peace

He could no longer return to the front line.

But if this was what the future held for him, attempting that final mission may not been a bad idea after all. It seemed to him that it had been worthwhile. He had been saved by these students who so adored him.

He honestly wished things could stay like this forever. Or maybe he wanted to believe it was possible.

But that did not last even 72 hours.

Before dawn, a certain radio transmission was made within New Yokohama Domain.

“This is Guren. I have confirmed the first report of the incident. I will now regroup with the main unit and pursue Target Group A.”

“This is Suiren. To learn Target Group A’s behavior patterns, I would like to secure Instructor B, a former Hidden One with a strong connection to A. Do I have authorization?”

Even if an individual came to a stop, the world continued to turn.

Sugiyado Souha’s true battle was about to begin.

## Chapter 2

### 1: Outbreak

“It’s finally here! The incredible product you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Never again will you have to wonder what snack to buy. Enjoy this extra-hard Happy Churn created with a new and improved thickener!!”

“Oh, ohh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The 17-year-old boy named Sugiyado Souha gave a bizarre cry inside the supermarket’s snack section.

“I-is this what they meant by X Day? There must have been signs, so how did I overlook them!?”

The core of his body was shaken by the news.

Yes. Happy Churn was humanity’s greatest invention, but it was brittle. The slightest impact would cause the short-lived snack to break. The family packs had each one packaged separately, so how many times had he shoved a couple in his pocket only to find his partner crumbled to dust within the clear wrapper? But that would never again be a problem. No longer would Happy Churn be bound to the home. It could finally spread its wings and fly out into the open world!!

(Th-this is it. With this, I can have Happy Churn with me 24/7!)

Most people discussed how the flour could be improved, but that was not what truly mattered. The Happy Churn God understood where the true foundation lay. It was all about the thickener. It was the same as cooking soba. Yes, Happy Churn had an English name, but it was built on a much more local foundation. And just like arare or rice crackers, this was a snack where you enjoyed the crunch between your teeth.

He nonchalantly grabbed a value pack and placed some random items like bread and milk in his basket to hide what he was really after, but his heart would not stop pounding wildly. After all, this harder version meant 24/7. He could eat them at home and on the go. No one could stop him now. He had to wonder if this was really legal. It was like finding a cheat code to make yourself Level 99 in an RPG.

“That will be 399 yen. Would you like a bag?”

The young wife working part-time saw him off with a smile and the legendary item was finally his.

It was a weekday morning, but no one was going to question his presence out here these days. Skipping school years or skipping straight to employment was fair game in this age where the merit system reigned supreme, so insisting kids should be in school was seen as discriminatory in some circles.

(Hell yes! What do I do now!? I can eat them at meals, as snacks, and even in the bath. No, no. I really need to try eating them on the go. Time and place are no longer meaningful constructs!! Mwa ha ha! Who needs to visit another world when my paradise is already here!?)

However, reality was not so kind.

It happened the very moment he set foot outside the supermarket’s automatic door.

“Don’t move!!”

“Mfh mrh mrh mfh ghh!!”

He was surrounded by extremely concerning metallic noises in all directions.

With men in black pressing the muzzles of their carbines against his cheeks, Sugiyado Souha’s face was transformed into something hideous while he tried his best to protect the shopping bag by holding it close.

“D-don’t…what!? Were they illegal after all!? But hold on! Unbreakable Happy Churn should be a dream come true for every last member of the human race!!”

The boy stubbornly insisted on protecting the shopping bag, but then he heard a solid footstep.

This sort of person did not generally produce audible footsteps. Moving silently was the most basic of basic skills. This was being used in lieu of a business card

The different schools had distinctive ways of moving silently and those in the know could tell them apart. It was similar to how shurikens had been developed to be as logical and efficient as possible, so their distinctive shapes could be used as evidence of who had been at the scene.

“Sugiyado Souha-san, I presume?”

The voice was as clear as a bell.

But the boy managed a frown on his hideously distorted face. He could tell which direction the sound had come from, but he could not pinpoint who had spoken the words.

Because he saw two girls in white dresses there.

Their long skirts with large slits fluttered in the wind.

The twin girls stood alongside each other with such precision they almost looked like each other’s shadow. Their semi-long hair had a golden glow reminiscent of heads of wheat after soaking up the sun’s blessing. There was no mistaking this for bleached blonde hair. One sister had a white hair extension next to one ear and the other had a red one, so that my have been how they distinguished themselves from each other.

The girls manage to be lovely and flashy simultaneously, but that was why the “shadowy scent” they carried with them seemed so out of place. Almost like they were being swallowed up by the shadow cast by the very light they produced.

“I am Shirazaya Guren,” said the one with the red hair extension.

“I am Shirazaya Suiren,” said the one with the white hair extension.

He was finally able to tell them apart. Although if he had not focused on the movement of the lovely buds of their lips, he would have remained trapped by the illusion.

“I apologize, but we have paid you a visit in order to ask your assistance.”

“…”

This apparently had nothing to do with the miraculous invention of hard Happy Churn, so Sugiyado breathed a sigh of relief and slowly put his hands up while wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants that made movement easy. The itchiness of his large scarf bothered him.

“I’m sure we have much to discuss, but isn’t this public location a problem for both of us?”

“If we were second rate or worse, perhaps,” replied one of the twins, Suiren, while she shut her eyes and teased her right earlobe. There was a hint of mockery in her voice. “But surely one of the Hidden Ones is aware of a way to speak in public without any of the uttered secrets reaching unwanted ears.”

He sighed.

They knew of the Hidden Ones rank which was a secret in and of itself. That alone placed the twins beyond a certain line. Whoever they were, they were not going to just let him leave.

It was possible this would become a case of kill or be killed. Even though he had already withdrawn from the front line.

Shortly afterwards, his lips stopped moving altogether. No, his tone of voice had changed entirely as he whispered in a way that vanished into the chatter of the surrounding crowd.

“Like this?”

“Well done.”

No one outside of 3 meters could hear them and the average person could not make it out even within that range. Even if it was recorded, the wavelengths of the background noise and their voices would match too closely to be decoded.

This technique was known as Chirping.

In a field kept hidden from ordinary people, this was as basic a technique as hiding one’s footsteps or presence.

“This tells me you’re active on the front line, so what do you need with someone like me?”

“We would like your assistance as Instructor Sugiyado.”

“Sorry, but the class is full. I am only accepting four individualized digital courses. I wish I could handle more, but I can’t. Besides, what could I teach you if you can do all this?”

“We are aware of that.”

They had introduced themselves and everything, but he briefly lost track of which was Guren and which was Suiren. Although those twins with black bracelets may have been fine with that perfect symmetry.

At any rate, the two girls spoke.

“We would like details on the thought patterns of the four Elite Ninjas you teach: Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.”

The meaning of his silence changed entirely.

Going after the girls’ instructor to learn how their targets thought showed extreme persistence. This was not just for a love of fighting. They intended to come up with a plan and lay a trap to deal with their target.

“I am sure you were very proud of your students. They have all reached the position of Elite Ninja, the highest rank among the spies working directly for the shogunate. And even though they are already working on the front line, we hear you get along well enough to have exchanged addresses so they can periodically return to ask for lessons.”

“And as a former Hidden One, you would know better than anyone how those four think. Yes, enough to predict their actions.”

Of course, he was not just going to agree to this.

Even if they normally only interacted via their phones, they were his students.

“What we have is nothing so special, dammit.”

He was already surrounded. Since his opponent was using the power of an organization, there would already be people watching his home and friends. How much could he do? How much could he protect? He was honestly having a hard time finding any option other than doing as he was told.

But he still said it.

Straight to their face.

“I just wanted someone else to fulfill the dream I lost, so I handed out all of the techniques I had. And those girls decided to stick with this selfish bastard. …How can I abandon those kind girls after all that?”

The white dress twins breathed exaggerated sighs.

This was their actual voice rather than the Chirping. The parents with children arriving at the supermarket finally noticed something was amiss and looked over at them.

Shirazaya Guren’s throat moved alluringly as she breathed.

“We are not unregistered ninjas, you know?”

“Shogunate spies have come to you, so please think about what that means.”

In other words, this was about an incident the ordinary police could not handle.

A crisis threatened the very survival of the country and it was on the same level as the unseen war with the heavily-equipped knight sand musketeers who targeted the country’s technology openly and in secret.

But what did that have to do with Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao? As ninjas, they were supposed to be the ones standing up to those threats.

“It looks like he is unaware what has happened.”

“Are you sure he did not run out to buy some snacks to soothe his sulking heart after they failed to contact him well after they were supposed to?”

That hit the bull’s eye.

But there was no need to let it show on his face.

“What are you saying those girls did?”

The twins shrugged at that question. They had to be skilled kunoichis, but the action perfectly matched their blonde hair and bright skin.

“They stole and ran off with a modular nuclear reactor which can be broken down and transported via freight train. If modified, that could function as a dirty bomb, or it could simply be set to detonate. To be clear, we are acting on the assumption that they will actually use it and not simply use it as a bargaining chip. So please help us.”

“We are front line ninjas as much as they are, but they are a step ahead of us. They seem to have a half day or full day lead on us. So we need to fill that gap somehow. That is where your understanding of their thought processes and ability to predict their actions comes in to play.”

### 2: Beautifying the Flowers

In a simple shower without a tub, a middle school girl with chestnut twintails let the warm water wash over her. Countless drops spilled down her somewhat curvy but still undeveloped bodylines.

In a life on the run, it could be easy to forget how you smelled. It could slip your mind since it was neither visible nor audible, but it could create an unidentifiable sense of something being “not quite right” that could gather attention. Thus, you could not neglect basic hygiene.

Also, the soaps and shampoos provided in these simple shower booths tended to be for men, and that was a problem.

“Think of it like a muscular bandit standing out because his hair has the sweet scent of a women’s herbal conditioner, Ouka.” Her teacher had once explained it like this. “So you need to acquire that along with suitable clothing and makeup and use them before an infiltration as the specific situation warrants.”

Kuhou Ouka had then asked him a question with a mischievous smile.

“Oh? And what kind of scent do you think suits me, Sensei?”

“…”

There was one thing she always remembered when seeing her undeveloped naked body in the mirror while washing away the sweat as part of that “necessary work”.

But she was dragged out of her thoughts by a voice from surprisingly close by.

“Ouka, it’s cramped in here, so quit spreading your hair back behind you with both hands like in a conditioner ad. Restrict your movements a little.”

“Hey, Bara. Did we really all have to cram in here together? The shower booth is cramped enough as it is.”

Ouka was answered not by sexy Hanasawa Bara, whose red ringlet curls were wet and flattened, but by cool beauty Nantou Hoozuki, who had undone her ponytail so her long silver hair was plastered against her lithe back.

“Because this is the shower at an internet café. It would actually gather more attention from an unsavory sort if a single young girl went to the shower alone. It is best not to underestimate amateur peeping toms who put their talents to the most useless use imaginable.”

Black bob cut Shizukuma Asagao was a head shorter than the rest, so she seemed to be drowning in the soft flesh surrounding her. She managed to puff out her cheeks and ask a question.

“What do you think Sensei would think if he knew we were about to be living out of places like this every day?”

In front of Sugiyado Souha, those girls had demonstrated the moody and meaningless pride so common in teenagers, but they had analyzed their own profiles and taken things in the opposite direction. He would never imagine all four of them were cramming themselves into a shower booth as small as a phonebooth.

In the past, finding places to sleep would not have been easy because hotels and inns had built a network with the police that supplied them with photos of wanted criminals. But the spread of room sharing and share houses had expanded their options considerably. At first glance, the advance of digitization seemed to have laid everything bare, but this age was actually convenient for those who lived in the shadows.

Silver-haired Hoozuki grabbed the body soap that sexy Bara held in her arm and reached below her own arm to apply it to her back while asking a question.

“So why have you been staring at your reflection with such a troubled look on your face, Ouka? Checking on your day-to-day growth?”

“No, it’s not that. But bath mirrors always remind me of something.”

The other girls crammed into the shower booth looked over to the cheap mirror that tended to get fogged up.

They all had a faint bitter look on their face. Like they were remembering some kind of failure.

“You too, Ouka?” asked alluring Bara while water dripped down her flushed skin.

“I think it happens to everyone. Everyone knows that’s part of being a kunoichi.”

Even the youngest, bob cut girl Shizukuma Asagao, stared sadly into the distance with her small face buried by the other three girls’ chests.

Ouka sighed while catching her fellow kunoichi’s face with her body and getting their wet legs tangled together.

“Yeah, when you’re training to be a kunoichi, you just know you have to seduce the closest guy to you.”

“On that note, Ouka, what look did Sensei give you when you went all out in your attempt?”

Bara skipped past what that “attempt” entailed, but Ouka still fell silent for a moment.

If he had blushed and angrily told her she was too young for that kind of thing, she might have retained some of her pride as a girl. She might have even found it cute and accelerated further.

But their teacher had provided the “perfect” response.

The resurrected memories brought an ashen look to her face.

“He said everyone has to start somewhere and that I could keep trying until I was satisfied. He didn’t even have to think about it and he looked downright bored. Heh. Heh heh.”

“He wasn’t even interested!? At least look up from the newspaper, Onii-chan!! What’s more important, the TV guide or me!?”

Asagao’s complaint shouted down by a modest chest suggested that their teacher had not mechanically provided them all the same response. But the depressed looks on all four faces staring at that mirror suggested they had all given it their best shot and been shot down.

“Sigh.”

Ouka lightly stretched her back to forcibly push out her still-growing chest while the shower water poured down her body and she looked to the mirror once more.

“I’ve been working on my looks since then, so maybe I could make his heart skip a beat now.”

### 3: The Four Girls – Again

“Sensei, Sensei.”

Those girls had always been following him around like baby chicks.

The modern ninja class was meant to be done over their phones with the materials shipped to them, so it was not designed for in-person contact. Nevertheless, they had worked out his location themselves and arrived uninvited.

“Heh heh. I finally outdid you, Sensei,” Ouka had said with a beaming smile. “A ninja needs to excel with information. Isn’t that what you taught me?”

She had apparently long since learned that he lived alone.

He could still remember it like it was yesterday.

And it had not just happened the one time. They had patiently supported him.

The hotpot they had made for him had been delicious. He had made sure to lecture them on not letting their personal lives interfere with their duties, but they had ended up laughing together, making rice soup out of it, and finishing off every last drop.

They were good kids.

Or he had thought they were. So why had they done this?”

“If I may be so bold.”

After he was led onto a black SUV, Shirazaya Guren cleared her throat and stopped Chirping. The special vehicle had thick bulletproofing and he imagined it was made so shining a laser on the windows was not enough to eavesdrop.

“We have concluded that you did nothing wrong. That is why we have asked for your assistance.”

“We were unable to acquire your records, but we have heard how fiercely you fought against those powerful knights and musketeers.”

“I didn’t do much. The only thing left to prove I fought at all are these scars on my body.”

“Officially speaking, yes.”

“Yes, but only officially speaking.”

Past glory was a double-edged sword.

Especially when you had three bolts in your spine and springs inserted in your legs to replace your ligaments.

A 5kg weight would make his spine feel funny and a 10kg weight would make it explode with pain. Plus, ordinary clothing with no bulletproofing or bladeproofing weighted about a kilo and a winter coat would add another kilo onto that. Frontline combat gear was out of the question.

He could hardly believe those kids had stuck around with an empty shell like him.

“Let’s get started. I want to know details.”

A modular nuclear reactor.

That was what Ouka and the others had supposedly stolen.

No matter which side they were on to begin with, that was too much to smile and ignore. He could not let them use the ridiculous power of a nuke as a bargaining chip no matter what their reasons were.

Shirazaya Suiren traced a finger along the edge of her right ear.

“As the name suggests, it is a nuclear reactor with its design simplified and size reduced to the extreme. It is contained in several linked containers that can be transported by freight train when separated.”

“Although it was not designed for domestic use. It was being researched as a form of infrastructure business to be shipped overseas from Dejima.”

The twins sat on either side of him in the back seat and they took turns providing the explanations. They could only be told apart by the white and red hair extensions next to their ears.

“Shrinking it down makes it easy to transport,” groaned the boy. “But that also makes it easier to steal, or it could be suspended from a plane or chopper and dropped on a target site.”

This had been developed under the fishy-looking title of a mobile nuclear reactor that could be set up anywhere on the planet. If they were lined up along a national border, they would likely function identically to a line of nuclear landmines. Plus, the country could claim it was a peaceful use of nuclear power, so if another country sent out a bomb squad in secret, that other country would be accused in an international conference of using their ninjas, tuxedos, or other special forces to commit infrastructure sabotage. It really was a convenient toy.

When Guren traced a finger along her throat, Sugiyado’s phone rang and it received mission relevant documents he had not asked for.

“Early this morning, the four ninjas under your instruction broke into the Resource Energy Agency’s nuclear physics lab located here in New Yokohama Domain and stole a single Hinata Type-1 Modular Nuclear Reactor. The lab was performing a final stress test in preparation for a demonstration in Southeast Asia, so all of the units were installed with fuel rods. That means they could detonate it at any time.”

“Why would they do that?”

“That is what we would like to know. The Elite Ninja spies you instructed already had status and honor, so why would they suddenly turn on the shogunate they are meant to serve?”

“No, not that.” Sugiyado corrected them while teasing the large scarf over his mouth. “They went to the trouble of breaking into a shogunate lab and then they only steal one of them? If they risked their lives on this, isn’t it human nature to want to steal as much as they could get their hands on?”

The twins exchanged a glance with the boy between them.

“Well…wouldn’t it be a simple issue of the weight limit? While they are simplified and small, these models are still only meant to be transported by freight train. Even with a specialized vehicle at their disposal, a group of just four would only be able to carry out so many.”

“If they got greedy and tried to take too many with them, they could have lost everything.”

They made a good point.

However…

“Then why did they break into a shogunate lab? Wouldn’t it be easier to head overseas where security is laxer and ‘borrow’ one of the reactors lined up on a national border?”

“Oh.”

“I won’t name names, but not every country has as many hang-ups about nuclear power as we do. Some leave rusted nuclear subs sunk at the bottom of a bay or power lighthouses with nuclear batteries and don’t bother to track what happens to them.”

That made him extremely curious why his students would break into the nuclear physics lab.

“Are you suggesting they are not that fixated on the modular nuclear reactor? They went to such lengths to obtain a bargaining chip as absurd as nuclear power, but that was no more than a smokescreen?”

“It worked, didn’t it? Thanks to that, no one knows what their true objective is.”

The SUV seemed to have reached its destination.

Sugiyado Souha stepped out into an underground parking garage somewhere, but he was not guided to the elevator or the stairs.

He was brought to the back of a giant tanker truck parked in the same garage.

And a glance down the maintenance hatch in the top showed the walls were covered in mission documents and it was filled with a fridge, a microwave, and sleeping bags for overnight work.

Within the faint smell of fancy Western sweets, Suiren toyed with her earlobe and whispered to him.

“Welcome to our home.”

There were no windows. The twins closed the hatch after climbing in with him, so he had no way of even guessing where they were headed. He could not even see the 1000m broadcast tower that could be seen from any part of the city. He could only tell they were moving thanks to the inertial forces affecting his body.

“Allow me to introduce myself again. I am Shirazaya Guren, a shogunate spy.”

“Likewise, I am Shirazaya Suiren. We are ranked as High Ninjas, but they say we could take an Elite Ninja’s head when we work together.”

They did not ask for a handshake.

Guren pointed at the wall of documents with her slender chin.

“I know this is sudden, but we would like to fill in the gaps in our information. You claimed earlier that the modular nuclear reactor is no more than a diversion. Would you care to elaborate?”

“It isn’t their style. They wouldn’t know what to do with nuclear power if they had it.”

Images of the four girls’ faces were displayed in the center of the document wall. The photos were probably the ones from the resumes they sent in to be registered as shogunate spies.

“Listen.” Sugiyado Souha recalled a memory of a more pleasant time that was hard to think back on now. “I am going to teach you many things. Some of them will be ways to hurt and harm people, but if you always work toward a righteous goal, there is no fear of your knowledge and techniques getting the better of you. So do not laugh and do not feel shame as you carry in your heart a righteousness you can believe in. That will support you more than you could ever imagine.”

He could remember them cheerfully replying on the screen.

As if shaking free of something and readying himself to fight, he pointed at the photos on the wall one by one.

“Kuhou Ouka. Age 14. Specializes in direct combat. She can control fire, water, wind, earth, and all else with only Midnight Tempest, a bayonet-equipped vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun she made herself. That might not sound very ninja-like, but carrying that high firepower in case of emergencies helps reduce the psychological pressure on the other members.

“Hanasawa Bara. Age 18. Specializes in disguise, camouflage, and other recognition interference techniques. If a door can’t be opened from the outside, she will get inside and open it from there. On the combat front, she is the assassin type. She sows confusion, yet her single attack is extremely powerful. In a way, she is the most ninja-like ninja.

“Nantou Hoozuki. Age 16. She uses Countless Calamities, a transformable multitool of an off-road motorcycle, and those close to her call her a stunt master. Her job is to construct a route into wherever they need to go. She is also skilled at using ropes and ladders. Plus, she can fight. Be on your guard if you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a roundhouse kick from that bike of hers.

“Shizukuma Asagao. Age 11. She is an information gathering expert and she can sneak into enemy territory using the tears and cuteness of a child, but she is also growing into something akin to a hacker. The ninja world is a world of data. You can assume she is the one who gathered all the information needed for a pre-mission briefing. She has no direct combat ability, but she excels at breaking apart enemy groups by causing friendly fire and paranoia. If things seem to be going badly, you should come to a stop and make sure no outside factor is artificially influencing things.”

Of course, those were all fake names.

In fact, anyone who reached their level would have their family register entry and national ID number erased. That meant they had no way of proving their Japanese citizenship.

Each of them was worth their weight in gold and it was said four Elite Ninjas together could bring down a feudal lord holed up in their castle. To reiterate, modern ninja techniques were an extremely dangerous form of Strategic Martial Arts that had been developed anew on top of a foundation taken from existing arresting techniques and military martial arts based on judo, karate, kendo, etc. Even with his injury, Sugiyado could destroy a unit of tanks as long as it was in a limited environment. Ouka and the others were in their prime, so how far could they go while working together?

That was an impressive roster, but Suiren silently tilted her head while toying with her right ear.

“I notice none of them specializes in mass destruction. The closest one would be Ouka, the direct combat expert.”

“She wouldn’t do that. For better or for worse, her only firepower is Midnight Tempest, that hunting gun with a bayonet. If you look through her past records, you should see she never even tries to detonate a gas pipe or gas tank. Unpredictable fire sources mess with her calculations and she wants to avoid the possibility of harming her allies.”

“Then what are they trying to do?”

That question suggested the four girls had not sent any kind of demands. Although it was possible they had contacted some high official and it was being dealt with internally.

If they were going to negotiate, they would isolate the target.

They would demand the target did not let the police or the shogunate ninjas get close.

Sugiyado himself had taught them that.

“The city seems to be continuing as normal, but the theft of a modular nuclear reactor must have messed with some plans below the surface. Do you have a list of the effects?”

Shirazaya Guren’s alluring throat tensed as she pointed wordlessly toward the wall.

One scrap of paper toward the outer edge of the documents appeared to be what he wanted.

“The foreign VIPs scheduled to visit New Yokohama Domain have delayed their visit, a popular motor show was canceled, a new smartphone announcement was canceled, and various others.”

“A major bank, a stock exchange, an insurance company, a government library digital archive, and a cellphone data center have gone into lockdown, but I imagine they are afraid of a largescale EMP attack. The VIPs with delicate medical implants have been evacuated into shielded shelters deep underground.”

“…”

Sugiyado viewed the documents on the wall, approached them, and flicked one.

“This motor show was canceled at the last minute.”

“Yes, what about it?”

“But not all events were canceled. This wall wouldn’t have enough space to display it all if they were.” The boy thought for a moment. “Was this motor show canceled because it is backed by the shogunate’s Ministry of Transport and the people running the show were warned?”

“Keep going.”

“Canceling the show at the last minute will leave tens of thousands of people with nowhere to be. They went to the trouble of traveling all the way here, so they aren’t just going to head home. That means the other events will be more crowded. In the worst cases, the expected occupancy of the venue may be overrun two times over.”

“Are you saying that will inevitably leave the security understaffed?”

“And this might seem crude, but not everyone visiting a motor show is there to see the cars. A lot of them will be there for the companion girls.”

Suiren stopped teasing her right earlobe and rushed over to a laptop. She called up a list of the events being held in the next few days. She must have found it online.

Sugiyado viewed the screen over her shoulder and pointed at one entry in the list.

“That’s it. And it’s only 200m from the motor show venue.”

“An idol festival supported by the international airport? But with 100 groups participating, it looks like it will be a real mixed bag quality-wise.”

“That fits the demographic perfectly. Some self-proclaimed idols might even work as a companion girl for the time being. If you don’t need a ticket reserved in advance and last-minute entries are allowed, they’re probably getting a huge influx of people.”

It looked like Ouka’s group of kunoichis had broken into a shogunate lab and stolen a modular nuclear reactor in order to cancel the motor show and send tens of thousands of people to the idol festival at the international airport. With so many extra people flooding in at the last minute, security would be completely overwhelmed.

Shirazaya Guren gulped.

“But what do they hope to accomplish by sneaking into an idol festival?”

“Beats me. They’ve never been into idols before.” Sugiyado glared at the screen. “But have you forgotten? That festival is taking place at one of the airports that have been doing poorly against the country’s linear motor train network. Sneak in there and you can accomplish most anything.”

### 4: Strategic Martial Arts

The Dejima-like New Yokohama Domain was an area of reclaimed land built out at sea. The only land route in was a large bridge known as the Umbilical Cord. The airport was an extension added onto the edge of the reclaimed land like a second scoop of ice cream. New Yokohama Domain itself was large enough to grow into a city of a million, but its land was not unlimited.

When the tanker truck arrived near the scene, Guren and Suiren left through the tank’s maintenance hatch.

They focused on their earphones.

“As planned, please ‘clean up’ the runways, fuel storage, and anything else that could cause major damage! After that, deal with the digital threats such as the control tower and server room!!”

“We don’t know how they intend to take people’s lives, but we need to assume they are planning something big enough for a modular nuclear reactor to be mere bait! Act accordingly!”

Sugiyado Souha left shortly thereafter and shielded his eyes from the sun with a hand.

There were more people than even he had anticipated.

With so many customers stolen by the linear motor trains, the airport had remade one of its vast international flight terminals into a festival venue. There was no entrance fee and they made their money on the drinks, but that meant the place was entirely out of control. The people who could not get inside were flooding the area outside the building.

“Is this wall of people too much of a challenge for shogunate kunoichis?”

“Do not be ridiculous.”

“You wait out here, advisor.”

By the time he heard the sound of large clothes beating at the air, the twins had both stripped off their white dresses to reveal their ninja outfits made with a spider web structure.

It was like a magician’s handkerchief. The dresses twisted around and the twins’ silhouettes seemed sucked into them before they transformed into the ninja outfits with collars and belts to cover the important parts and some decorations like a large flower on the back of the hip.

Overall, they were a mixture of Japanese and Western. They looked like a sleeveless kimono with a pleated miniskirt added on. They looked as revealing as a cheerleader uniform, but the entire body would be covered by a special flesh-colored material, similar to figure skaters. …Although that was similar to wearing full-body bike shorts, so they still had to wear something on top.

It was strange, but just like with figure skaters, the short skirt was still distracting even when you knew their entire body was covered.

The girls disappeared before anyone in the crowd could turn back their way.

(Does that flesh-colored part support their movements with electric potential elastic belt cylinders? That would be Soaring Wings Ver…what’s it up to now? Regardless, that’s a lot of support. Overusing accessories like that will wear down your own cartilage.)

He could not help but start grading them.

He shook his head, exasperated with himself. That was not his role here.

There was no point in looking up into the blue sky to watch the girls leaping from rooftop to rooftop. He had his own idea of where to check.

“…”

He lifted his large scarf up over his mouth.

The cloth covering his face like a mask had been given some special decoration so it would fool facial recognition. It was not much different from the sunglasses and other commercial products to that end. It was all in how you used it.

He had never hoped to get in through the main gate stuffed full of people and he no longer had it in him to leap around between rooftops, so he made his move on the ordinary backdoor. It was of course locked, but he pulled one of his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais from the back of his hip.

(The nitrogen would be too powerful here.)

He simply stuck the sharp tip in the gap and used leverage to force off the electronic lock’s cover. Then he messed with the wiring within to get inside.

Airports seemed so spacious, but the corridors were cramped when you entered through the back.

Shirazaya Guren and Suiren seemed to think Kuhou Ouka’s group was trying to attack the airport and that the idol festival’s presence was happenstance. Sugiyado had somewhat led their thinking in that direction, but he had another idea.

(A mixed bag of idols, huh?)

A total of a 100 idol groups would take turns performing on stage. They were treated with a lot less care than with ordinary concerts where a single idol or group rented out an entire domed stadium, but this really was a mixed bag. There really were some with the “national” title who earned a billion or even ten billion yen in a year.

A modular nuclear reactor was definitely expensive, but not many people could do business with them. And that included with threats. So if you were after profit, it would be a lot better to use the reactor to get close to an idol whose value most everyone could see.

And despite their value, an entertainer was a lot less strictly guarded than a giant diamond in a museum’s glass case or a gold bar in a bank vault. It was laughable to think you could protect a diamond or gold bar if it was free to wander around town with only a few muscular bodyguards.

It pained him to think Ouka and the other three would be committing crimes purely for money, but this was a professional job at this point. Combat was not kind enough to change its result if you prayed hard enough. He had to harden his heart and assume the powder keg had already been lit back when they stole the modular nuclear reactor.

He borrowed a pamphlet from a cardboard box that probably contained excess stock, he viewed the list of participating idols, and he tapped his finger on the photo of the biggest earner there.

(Shitou Kyouka. It’s gotta be her.)

This might be a largescale idol festival with 100 groups performing, but the organizers and sponsors at the top had their own plans.

This was likely all a way to give their prize girl the trophy so they could claim she fought fair-and-square with a hundred competitors and emerged victorious. And if you ignored the fixed game that was first place, the other unknown idols did have a chance here.

Locating her was not hard.

The internal staff had welcomed that superior idol very differently from the rest. Listening in from the edge of the corridor told him a lot. She was not to be given any cold drinks before her performance, no part-timers were allowed in to play amateur paparazzi, and so on.

When Sugiyado visited her location, he did not find a dressing room.

She had been given a rehearsal booth that was the exact same size as the main stage. It was impressive. With 100 groups participating, it was hard to give them all separate rooms. Idols from the same production company were probably forced to share a room. Simply giving this one a space larger than a school gym all to herself was enough to know how much of an advantage she had been given.

The rehearsal booth was lit up by several lights powerful enough to act like heaters.

In the center of the stage stood a girl with short hair and a mostly black costume with a flashy miniskirt, small wings, and a tail. It was probably supposed to look like a demon.

That was Shitou Kyouka.

Her refreshing voice contained an odd intensity and charm that ruled this vast space even during meaningless voice training.

There was no sign of any staff in here. It was so convenient you would think she had known this was coming.

Sugiyado Souha frowned, slightly twisting the scar on the tip of his nose, and spoke.

“Who are you?”

That national someone tilted her head with microphone and stand in hand.

Everything down to her fingertips was identical to what he had seen on TV and in that pamphlet.

However.

He immediately pulled a Fierce Fang air pressure kunai from the back of his hip and threw it toward her cute little face. A hit from that special assassination weapon could pry open a tank.

Time seemed to stop and silence covered all.

Yes, the girl who was supposedly a professional idol and a combat amateur instinctually tilted her head the other way so the deadly weapon passed right by her.

He asked another question as if that came as no surprise.

“Are you planning to sing and dance looking like Shitou Kyouka?”

Yes.

Kidnapping a top idol would not mean getting paid a massive ransom. Even if her family handed over her credit card or bank information, the bank would reject any request to withdraw all the money from her account.

And no matter how valuable an idol was, she could not simply be sold for that supposed value. She was the same as the modular nuclear reactor in that sense.

So the cleverest method was to use abducted Shitou Kyouka’s body to copy her fingerprint and iris patterns. If her family could not give you access to her bank account, then you only had to disguise yourself as the idol herself.

The top idol on the stage answered him with a bewitching grin.

The microphone stand she held shook.

In the blink of an eye, she revealed a black, chrome steel gun with a grip and stock decorated like a katana. That vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun was known as Midnight Tempest.

He knew what that meant.

“Ouka.”

A memory meaninglessly flickered in the back of his mind.

He decided this was a form of coquetry meant to capture a target, so he forced it out of his mind. Time was flowing all the while.

She threw off the stage costume to reveal the spider web ninja outfit that seemed to proudly display the undeveloped bodylines of a middle school girl. That bodysuit revealed all of her shallow curves and it was covered by a hybrid outfit that looked like the combination of an old-fashioned sleeveless kimono and a lower-body apron. Decorative cloths blew in the wind, a red rope danced behind her hips like a cat’s tail, and long chestnut hair was worn in twintails. He recognized it all.

His thoughts immediately turned to Midnight Tempest, which could control fire, water, wind, earth, and all else and was equipped with a bayonet and a multipurpose sight that resembled binoculars. She was like an incarnation of direct fighting power, a rarity for ninjas. He took a few steps back to adjust the distance between them. It had a close-range blade and its capsule rounds could contain incendiary, freezing, electric, acidic, or adhesive materials. Taking a rush of those varied attacks head on would not be the best idea.

But then it hit him.

She was an incarnation of direct fighting power, but chestnut twintailed Kuhou Ouka had lacked the skill in disguise needed to fool a crowd of a hundred thousand and all the TV cameras.

Which meant…

“No, is that Bara!?”

As soon as he saw through the disguise, the silhouette melted once more.

The ninja outfit he now saw had an entirely different design. This one was a bodysuit worn below a flashy oiran-style kimono that left her shoulders exposed and left the ends of the large obi draping down past her knees. At 18, her bodylines were more alluring than cute. She had a large chest and a slender waist. Her fiery red hair was worn in splendid ringlet curls for a luxurious look very unlike a ninja.

But now was not the time to stare.

He could already hear the sharp sound of something like a long needle stabbing through the air.

It had not been thrown by hand.

Each of Hanasawa Bara’s ringlet curls had a powerful electromagnet woven in, for a total of 18. Each of them was a coilgun that used powerful electromagnetism to launch a metal core, similar to how a linear motor train worked.

She specialized in disguise and camouflage, so her job was to sow confusion and then assassinate the enemy with a single powerful attack.

In this case, she had used the double disguise to alter the distance between them and then destroyed the stage lighting to “increase” the number of flying weapons. It was all an issue of the focal point. If you held a finger in front of your face and then tried to look into the distance, the number of fingers would seem to increase. And adjusting the eye’s focal distance was not the only way to adjust the pupil size. It could be done against your will when the brightness of the light changed. The confusion did not even last two full seconds, but that was plenty of time when you wanted to make a projectile attack.

If he had not been familiar with her habits, it would have all ended here.

“!?”

His hand danced around before his mind could catch up.

He had drawn a new double-edged knife-like Fierce Fang from the back of his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt. He had never submitted the designs to anyone and it was a delicate enough weapon that he doubted even Ouka and the others could use it.

He took that thick, tungsten steel blade and slashed up from below to knock down the pin-like weapons flying toward his eyes. A kunai was originally a digging tool, not a projectile weapon, so it was plenty sturdy.

But that had not been the best move.

(Crap.)

He was familiar with Bara’s thorns. Her weapon was named Candy Needle. Those were special poison needles made by mixing various chemicals with melted sugar and letting them harden. They must have also had iron sand mixed in to launch them with those coilguns. If stabbed by one, your own body heat would melt it and allow it to infect you, but if you deflected one, the shattered pieces smaller than glass shards would enter your body through the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Targeting his eyes had been no more than a way to get him to reflexively move his hand.

(Ghhh!?)

He immediately shut his eyes and turned his head away, but the right half of his vision immediately died. The poison was already being carried around his body after being absorbed by the mucous membranes. But he did not have time to tremble in fear. The enemy was approaching fast.

Sugiyado Souha was not the kind of guy who would let himself be killed just because he could not use one eye. He was suffering from extreme pain and fear, but on a different level, his strategic thinking continued.

(Bara uses the coilguns made from the electromagnets hidden in her hair. That means she needs a large power source – a large-capacity lithium ion battery. If I destroy that, I can bring down her strategic support system.)

Then where was her second heart?

There was only one possibility.

(That oiran-style shoulder-exposing kimono seems like it doesn’t leave much to the imagination, but just like an unzipped coat, her back is always covered. She must be using a harness or something to carry the battery pack like a backpack!!)

It might seem unrelated at first, but the way her large chest seemed lifted by something was likely due to the harness. He could tell a slight difference there compared to her usual red dress. It was like she was wearing a push-up bra.

“!!”

He forcibly cut the pain off from his mind.

He accurately launched one of his air pressure kunais into the groove between panels forming the stage floor below his student’s feet. He had already spun the dial with his thumb, so after exactly three seconds, the nitrogen activated the device and mercilessly destroyed the floor below Bara’s feet.

First, he knocked her off balance.

Once she showed her side or back to him, he would aim for and destroy the large-capacity lithium ion battery that would be hidden below her kimono and obi.

“Was that your plan, Sensei!?”

A moment later, Bara let out a roar while embracing her own body as if squishing her large chest.

Did she fold up her arms like that to avoid accidentally hitting herself?

Her 18 red ringlet curls all floated up and became cannons. She actually fired the coilguns at the floor all around her as if to add damage atop damage. The floor material burst up around her like a crater or splash.

This was not an attack from the Candy Needles that shattered upon impact. This had to be Final Cannon, thick and heavy metal needles that wove depleted uranium into well-tempered steel. Unlike the easily-shattered Candy Needles, these supplied the full power of the coilguns. But what was Hanasawa Bara’s true intent here?

(A makeshift barrier!?)

In terms of modern weapons, his Fierce Fang was similar to a precisely-aimed rocket. Instead of piercing the target like a sniper rifle, it would shred the target from within once it recognized a hit.

That made it vulnerable to obstacles. A single tree branch of leaf in the way would block the line of fire and it would shred the wrong thing.

Both sides of the fight knew each other well enough to block their tactics and ninja arts with simple tricks.

While Sugiyado’s air pressure kunai was blocked by the pieces of the floor, Bara’s Final Cannon could break through that obstacle like it was wet paper and break his entire body and her Candy Needles could weave through the gaps and inject him with powerful poison.

Normally, this would be the end – a hopeless checkmate.

However.

“Is that all you’ve got, Bara!?”

“!?”

He was not broken.

When reaching out toward a student being swallowed by the depthless darkness, his spirit would never be broken no matter how desperate his situation. He had no reason to doubt himself here. He was willing to make an enemy of the world if it would save them. He did not need to think twice to know that.

This was why he had agreed to help Shirazaya Guren and Suiren.

The situation was worsening at an accelerated rate. If it continued on to the end, they would lose everything. And here he was working to save people within it all. He felt like he was once more floundering in that nightmare where he had broken his spine, but that changed nothing about what he had to do.

He could not abandon someone he had grown so close to.

No matter what.

It was in fact his student Bara who looked shocked when faced with that willpower of steel.

He knew they would not hit his target, but he still threw a few more Fierce Fangs. They hit the flipped-up floor panels before reaching Bara, but that was fine. He used the devices to tear apart and destroy the floor material, rearranging the layout in midair. In a shape that Bara had not expected.

Her ringlet curls finally fired the Final Cannon needles of depleted uranium alloy at Mach 7.5, but it was too late.

Just as a bullet fired through glass would have its course diverted every so slightly, Bara’s Final Cannons had their paths bent by the unexpected number of obstacles in their path. They shot right past his face.

He did not even blink.

There was now a narrow empty space between them, much like the eye of a needle.

“!!”

“!?”

A Fierce Fang left the boy’s hand and poisonous Candy Needles left Bara’s hair, but the kunoichi girl would only have noticed something after launching her attack: Sugiyado Souha had lured her into making that attack.

And.

His target was not Bara who had been disguised as an idol. In fact, he could not hope to hit her body that continued its living motions even as she fired from her hair. With an eye taken out and poison in his bloodstream, it was hard to hit a target that could escape the single point of a sniper blast.

So he did to her what he had done to himself.

As soon as a Candy Needle was launched from her ringlet curl, he hit it with his kunai. From the front, that was like targeting the tip of a needle, but the ringlet curl coilgun barrel could only launch the Candy Needle straight out. The ballistic path was easy enough to predict if he already knew which way that barrel was pointed. Especially when the line of fire between them was limited by so many obstacles. That was far easier than targeting Bara herself who continued evading as if dancing.

By throwing the kunai through the open path, it naturally flew toward the Candy Needle. He only had to use the guidelines already set up for him. Unlike Bara’s flowing, living movements, this was as easy as completing a tutorial.

The shattered Candy Needle burst in front of the kunoichi and covered her small face with its small fragments.

“Ah!?”

She leaned back, unintentionally jiggled her large chest, and quickly held a hand to her face, but it was too late.

The flow of time seemed to revert to normal for both of them.

The floor materials spreading out around her like a crater or splash clattered back down.

Sugiyado cautiously pulled a Fierce Fang out into his hand as he spoke.

“Now we’re even, Bara. No, we aren’t. What are the basics of poison effects? I taught you this!”

“…”

She held her right eye and bit her lip a little before finally giving in and answering.

“It comes down to the speed of blood flow and your weight.”

“Yes. And your smaller body means it takes less to reach a lethal dose. Plus, standing under those bright spotlights must have warmed you up like a halogen heater. That means the exact same poison will spread through your body faster. This is checkmate, Bara!”

“Kh…Sensei.”

Given the poison, she needed to avoid getting worked up and thus accelerating her blood flow.

But the boy was at his limit too.

Each of the girls had their own circumstances.

He had taught them all of his secret techniques in order to give them the strength they needed to face this harsh and cruel reality without being crushed.

He had believed it would lead them to happiness.

So why was this happening?

“Then tell me this before we both collapse! Why did you do this? And where are the others!? Ouka and Hoozuki are a part of this too, aren’t they!? Where are they!?”

But in truth, he was in the more dire situation.

I am going to teach you many things.

Some of them will be ways to hurt and harm people.

But if you always work toward a righteous goal, there is no fear of your knowledge and techniques getting the better of you.

That was what he had tried to teach them.

No, he had taught them that.

“Yes, Sensei. Your Ouka is over here.”

He heard a voice from behind him.

Even with the poison’s effects, he had been careless to let someone sneak up on him. Or was this a testament to their skill?

He recognized the voice.

It was Kuhou Ouka, the strange ninja who specialized in direct combat.

“…!?”

He tried to spin around like a tornado with Fierce Fang in hand, but the active-duty Elite Ninja was several times faster.

A dull pain ran through the back of his neck.

Impossible sparks filled his vision.

Once he realized he had been hit with the stock of her unique gun, he had collapsed forehead-first to the stage without bracing for impact.

“Ouka!!” shouted sexy Hanasawa Bara. But she did not sound happy to see help arrive. “Wasn’t there a better way of doing that!? Poor Sensei!!”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Sensei. Are you okay? That hurt, didn’t it?”

She gently flipped him over onto his back. He saw someone with still-growing bodylines peering down at him. He saw chestnut twintails and red ringlet curls. If not for the sinister bayonet-equipped hunting gun named Midnight Tempest and the coilguns hidden in those curls, they would have been beautiful enough to forget all about the ninja outfits and fall in love.

And.

They really did sound worried about him. They were exactly how he remembered them, but that was what made no sense here.

“You…two.”

One wore a sleeveless kimono plus lower-body apron and the other wore an oiran-style shoulder-baring kimono. They both wore bodysuits below that. Those kunoichis made no attempt to hide their ninja outfits made with a cutting-edge spider web structure. That proved they were willing to turn this city of a million into a battleground.

They had stolen a modular nuclear reactor and abducted a top idol. Those were not your average crime.

“Why are…you doing…this?”

He could barely even see while collapsed on the stage, but he still squeezed out a voice as if groping through the darkness.

“Did I…do something wrong? Tell me, Ouka, Bara.”

“Bara, hurry and give him the antidote. Anyone could get their hands on it, but the shogunate’s dogs can be careless in the weirdest ways.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am. It’s really not much more than an animal tranquilizer, so it doesn’t have a lethal limit. Oh, I’m feeling dizzy now too. That’s not good. Ouka, carry me if I pass out, okay?”

“Will do.”

They briskly made preparations just like they always did. He could not even imagine what had caused everything to go wrong.

While peering down at him, Kuhou Ouka smiled in an alluring way that did not suit her undeveloped silhouette.

“Nothing has changed, Sensei. Not for us.”

“What?”

“ ‘I am going to teach you many things. Some of them will be ways to hurt and harm people. But if you always work toward a righteous goal, there is no fear of your knowledge and techniques getting the better of you.’ Right?”

She sounded like she was begging for his praise. Almost like a puppy.

But wait. Could that mean…?

“Hold on. What are you trying to do?”

“Shitou Kyouka is a top idol who makes 10 billion yen a year. If you earn that much, you’ll get the VIP treatment in asset management. She should be immediately welcomed into the special sectors of banks and stock exchanges. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.”

“But the shogunate will have secret external storage for any information they don’t want to keep too close by. They’ll use the excess space that not even the server administrator is aware of. That defeats the purpose of the usual security methods, but they’re afraid of rival factions learning about the skeletons in their closet.”

Based on the documents shown to him by blonde-haired Shirazaya Guren and Suiren, Sugiyado had guessed that stealing the modular nuclear reactor would cancel some other events and have the bank and stock exchange servers isolated in fear of an EMP attack. But what if those servers contained more than just money?”

“…”

He felt like his brain was tingling.

And not from the poison. He was probably subconsciously refusing to connect these hints together into an answer.

This was about information the shogunate would want to keep hidden no matter what.

And also information they would fear to keep nearby.

“Sensei.”

And his students had said they were working toward a righteous goal, just as he had taught them.

“We want to learn the truth of the final mission that led to your position being unfairly taken from you.”

“We would do anything for you, Sensei. Tch. What an embarrassing line. Stop making me say stuff like that.”

His brain froze.

Yet his heart pounded wildly like it was going to boil over and burst.

(For me?)

This, he had not even remotely expected.

(To save me?)

No. That was the one thing they could not do! Warning bells blared in his mind.

“Ouka, Bara!!”

“It isn’t just us. Hoozuki and Asagao feel the same way.”

“It’s over for me. I’ve accepted it. So you don’t have to dig this back up! No one wants that!!”

“But we can’t accept that. You can’t return to the front line because of your injuries? You can only work as an instructor now? Not a chance. I don’t know what actually happened back then, but they clearly treated you unfairly. If they hadn’t intentionally delayed your treatment, those wounds wouldn’t have been so bad! And making you an instructor wasn’t some kindness from the shogunate. It was the opposite! They didn’t know what you would say if you were given your freedom, so they surrounded you with us. I can’t think of any other explanation for every scrap of evidence we’ve seen!”

“It’s wrong for us to get all the credit. Someone else clearly deserves more praise than anyone. Isn’t that right, Sensei?”

“~ ~ ~!!”

To be honest, he was glad they cared so much for him. It helped immensely to know they remained true of heart and were not kidnapping people for money.

But they could not do this.

The darkness of that final mission was too deep.

If they got involved, not even those four Elite Ninjas would escape unharmed.

“Don’t worry.” Kuhou Ouka crouched down and gently smiled while peering down at his face. “Sensei, we won’t cause you any trouble. You report everything that happened here and continue pursuing us as an enemy. The shogunate’s dogs need some kind of assistance to keep up.”

“And it should help rattle the shogunate bigshots who have something to hide here.”

Sugiyado just about cried out in a desperate attempt to stop them, but he must have predicted that they would have slipped from his grasp before he could do anything.

“You do the honors.”

“Really? I wouldn’t hold back if I were you.”

Kuhou Ouka laughed and took a swig from the vial that Hanasawa Bara handed her. But instead of swallowing it, she kept it in her mouth and moved her face in close. Her slender fingers pulled the scarf down from his mouth.

Her lips tasted of medicine.

The bitter liquid that flowed into his mouth dissolved the toxin wreaking havoc on his body.

“That was my first? What about for you, Sensei?”

After a short bashful pause, it was finally over.

That acted like a dividing line.

“Okay, Sensei, we will be leaving for today.”

“Once this is over, let’s have another hotpot party. We can finish it off with udon this time.”

After laying limp Sugiyado down on the stage, the two girls in cutting-edge ninja outfits stood up. They were really going to leave this time. Without Bara remaining to play the role of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka, the alert level would go up, but they must have decided staying would be too dangerous.

That meant they were moving to the next stage of their plan.

They were headed toward near certain doom.

They really would reach that final mission at this rate. If his students were headed toward the abyss, he could not just sit idly by and let it happen.

(Kh!!)

He desperately tried to reach out a hand while collapsed on the stage.

But he could not do anything.

A moment later, the girls had entirely vanished from view.

## Chapter 3

### 1: Captivating Beauties Behind the Scenes

“Hm, Sensei will always be Sensei, won’t he? Maybe I should have gone with those two.”

A small girl leaned against the railing on a building rooftop while restlessly pulling some fries from a paper takeout bag.

She was about 10 and her glossy black hair was worn in a bob cut, so she might have looked something like a Japanese doll. Except she was wearing a pure white military uniform with a tight skirt. Add in the long boots and she provided a strange mixture of Japanese and Western.

She focused on the earphone that was linked to her phone.

“I never got to say it because he would have gotten after me for it, but Sensei is so cute. He looks like he’s cool and sharp, but he’s a softy on the inside.”

The small-faced girl slowly narrowed her eyes as if thinking back on some memory or another. That proved that she too had memories that she liked to indulge in.

But it did not last long.

“Asagao.”

A voice reached her from the rooftop instead of over her phone. She had not heard a door opening and the emergency buzzer for the emergency exit had not sounded, yet the speaker was there all the same.

Unlike Asagao in her white military uniform with the tight skirt and baggy sleeves, this girl wore a ninja outfit that showed off her figure. In what looked an open-backed one-piece swimsuit plus the baggy pants of a male ninja, Hoozuki was a fusion of extremes in a different way than Shizukuma Asagao.

The cool beauty tightened her various belts and straightened her beautiful back.

“Bara screwed up and we’re on to the next phase. You need to get ready.”

“I just received a call about that. And Bara can hear everything you’re saying. Want to get on the line? She’s pretty mad about you saying she screwed up.”

“But it’s the truth.”

The silver ponytail girl gave a bitter look. Hanasawa Bara was older than her, but this girl was certain she was older mentally.

Nantou Hoozuki was wearing something like a student bag on her back, but when she tossed it to the side, it assembled an off-road motorcycle similar to some kind of spring-loaded 3D puzzle. That was Countless Calamities. Its engine normally produced a loud roar, but the internal components could be directly covered with soundproofing materials on the level of a gun’s silencer, so if she shut off the headlight at night, she could sneak up behind a target in almost near silence and end their life.

“The shogunate’s dogs should catch on soon and lock things down. We’re going to be a lot busier now, Asagao.”

“Sensei won’t sell us out. I mean, he’s so cute deep down!”

“We have to prepare for the worst. Besides, I would prefer it if he gave them an honest report. I don’t want him getting hurt trying to protect us while surrounded by those dogs.”

“You sure sound confident you can handle this.”

“Of course I am,” spat out Hoozuki while leaning forward a bit and curving her back to climb aboard Countless Calamities. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take back our precious teacher’s life. I intend to win this no matter what, even if it means making an enemy of that very teacher.”

### 2: Further Problems

The twins wearing cheerleader-like ninja outfits made from a combination of a sleeveless white kimono and a miniskirt were hurriedly working within an ambulance.

“Suiren, prepare the blood test. I want to see what he was given.”

“Understood, Guren. I will also prepare the stomach pump and the full-body dialysis. If this is slow-acting, there’s still time.”

Sugiyado Souha in his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants had been taken aboard an ambulance they had called instead of heading back onto their tanker truck. He was lying on an electric stretcher, his shirt was opened, and several electrodes attached to cords were pasted to his chest. The truck likely had the equipment for this sort of thing, but they probably did not want anyone associating it with something that stood out so badly.

All three of them left the international airport aboard the ambulance.

“…”

At this rate, they would discover he had been given an antidote for the poison. That could lead to suspicions about collusion between him and his students.

He briefly considered what was going to happen.

If the antidote was discovered, no matter what reason he gave for it, he would be removed from the team since he clearly still had some kind of favorable connection with the targets. That would be an option here. In fact, it would be the best option if he wanted to avoid fighting his students. He might be confined for a while afterwards, but he would be freed soon enough.

But that would prevent him from having any involvement in this incident.

Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

They had not grown corrupt and they were not abusing their ninja skills to cause some major incident. They were obeying the conviction in their heart and attempting to find the truth of the final mission that had so greatly influenced his life.

At this rate, they would never return alive.

So he could not sit idly by and let it happen.

He knew all too well that taking on a burden beyond his abilities would come with a terrible price, just like it had back when he lost everything.

But.

Even so.

It was their time with him that had raised them to feel this righteous anger toward what had happened during that final mission. If he did nothing as they walked toward the precipice, he would have as good as murdered them himself.

His actions here were restricted, but it was still the best place for him to gather information related to the threat those girls faced.

He could not let himself be kicked out.

Ouka’s group did have to be stopped after stealing the modular nuclear reactor and abducting a top idol, but he knew nothing good would come of letting things play out according to the scenario drawn up by the shogunate’s darkness.

He had to outdo them.

He had to use them.

And what did he need to do that? What could he do to avoid suspicion, acquire information on their quarry, and sow confusion within the investigation team?

(The antidote.)

He focused on that.

His options here were limited, so he materialized the smallest of the hurdles he had to clear.

(First, I need to stop them from analyzing the antidote or researching where it came from. I need to trick them. If I don’t, I won’t make it any further. I can’t let them think the antidote came from Ouka. If I’m kicked out of here, I can’t stop those four.)

“Ugh.”

He wrinkled the scar on his nose while groaning and twisting on the stretcher. He rolled from his back to his side and used that movement to catch some of the tape between his body and the stretcher and peel it away to lift up an electrode. Then he only had to place his phone on it and have it vibrate by setting off an alarm in silent mode.

The unnatural vibration messed with the contact between electrode and skin to create an abnormality on the EKG monitor without the need for an outside electrical source.

“His heartrate is abnormal! The amplitude pattern is fluctuating! He’ll go into shock at this rate!!”

“Damn!! Sugiyado-san!!”

It was a little more complicated, but the idea was not all that different from a small child in the school infirmary messing with the thermometer to get an excuse to skip class. Everything had its uses. Even silent mode was fairly loud in quiet places, but it could go unnoticed when there was a lot of other noise around.

Shirazaya Guren gulped and quickly grabbed his shoulders to roll him onto his back again, but he gathered his strength to fight it and kicked his legs in a way that would not put pressure on his damaged back. It would look a lot like he was convulsing as deadly poison circulated through his body. Forcing your way through with brute strength was not the only way to do things. A ninja needed ways to make themselves look weak as well.

If he was rolled onto his back, the phone’s presence would be discovered, so he ended that trick and reduced the intensity of his feigned convulsions.

“Has he stabilized?”

“No, we can’t know that for sure. He could deteriorate at any moment. Prepare the stomach pump!”

While the twins were focused on the monitor, he snuck a hand behind his back and pulled one of his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais from below his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt. He may have been able to aim for defenseless Guren and Suiren’s throats, but he that would mean wiping out the investigation team he needed to use.

(The stretcher uses electric assistance. That means it has a large motor…and a magnet.)

The kunai’s tungsten steel was not the most magnetic of materials, but that was not what he was interested in. He used the pointed tip to unscrew and pop off the cover and then he pulled out the powerful neodymium magnet used for the motor.

The preparation was simple.

“!!”

With an extra large “convulsion”, his back and the rest of his body hopped up and he pushed his palm against the side of a piece of precision machinery in the cramped ambulance. No, he pressed the neodymium magnet against it.

Needless to say, pressing a magnet against a medical computer would cause a malfunction.

“Ah!?”

Shirazaya Suiren’s white hair extension swayed as she cried out and Guren quickly reached for the wiring behind the device, but he used that moment to slip the magnet behind his hips and then return it to the stretcher’s motor while they were not looking. His phone, the air pressure kunai, and the neodymium magnet were all like balls he was juggling. But right now he needed a certain type of courage more than skilled fingers. He was redirecting the attention of more than one person right in front of him while performing tricks right out in the open. This was the standard method of stage magicians, of con artists, and of ninjas.

He had taken out the EKG. There was no more need for restraint in his performance. He shook his body, breathed erratically, and let his eyes crawl around unnecessarily while grabbing at the chest of Guren’s white dress.

“Oh…bh!?”

“Oh, no. The convulsions are back. Suiren, restart the device immediately! Sugiyado-san, I do apologize, but I must strap down your arms and legs.”

“No…wait…my breast pocket…”

“?”

“My school’s…antidote. If they used the poison…I taught them…”

Guren sprang into action. What she found in his short-sleeved dress shirt’s breast pocket was a small bottle of commercial eye drops, but not many professionals would walk around with a set of bottles actually labeled “poison” and “antidote”.

She removed the cap, and…

“Please open your mouth, Sugiyado-san. Suiren, help me! Hold his hands down!! I’ll pry open his mouth!!”

It was said bitterness was the sign of a good medicine.

Now he only had to swallow it.

Blonde Suiren actually gulped louder than him.

“He’s…settled down?”

Of course he had.

He had been given the real antidote quite a while before. But he no longer had to fear the medical equipment recovering and then discovering an antidote in his body. He had created a reason for it to be there.

“Pant, pant.”

(Will that allow me to stick around for the time being?)

He was finally released from his tension.

But the end was not in sight yet.

The ambulance’s radio received a transmission.

“This is Azure Dragon 01. You say those runaway ninjas have made their move? Then hurry up and tell us where to aim and who to shoot. I’m so bored I swear my entire body is gonna rust.”

“Azure Dragon? Who’s that?” asked Sugiyado.

“The armored samurai handling our firepower support,” replied one of the twins.

“This is Yellow Dragon 00,” the other twin said into the radio. “Azure Dragon 01, please remain on standby until you receive further orders. Unnecessary transmissions have a chance of hindering progress of the mission.”

“Sorry, Little Miss Doll, but I’m not good at all that awful sneaking around.”

For once, the calm and composed twins clicked their tongues.

But not at what was said over the radio. They had both looked out the white smoked window.

A heavy gust of wind blew in as a large moss green shogunate truck pulled up alongside them.

This was clearly a military vehicle.

The back had no canopy covering it, so the giant forms curled up in two rows were exposed to the elements.

Instead of adding armor to human silhouettes, these looked like their silhouettes had been remade into those of carnivorous dinosaurs. They were masses of artificial muscles and full-body armor with sinister Gatling guns and grenade launchers worn over the shoulders or back.

These were the armored samurai.

Unlike Sugiyado or the twin kunoichis, this high firepower did not know how to hide. The crests of their samurai families were emblazoned prominently on their chests to identify themselves and these physical manifestations of death would not hesitate to reduce anyone to a puddle of blood in their efforts to uphold the law. These were the berserkers of an insane world that heaped on praise when they heaped on the killings.

This kind of firepower was not meant to be used for domestic criminal matters. These were weapons of war meant to stand up to the extraordinary knights and musketeers arriving by sea and air to steal the nation’s technology.

Guren audibly gulped before responding.

“Azure Dragon 01!! Know your place in this! If you trip us up by practically announcing our presence, you might as well be destroying your own eyes and ears here!!”

“That’s more like it. Do you shut-in cowards need a nice spanking now and then to keep you on your toes? I mean, I’m sure it hurts to kill some fellow kunoichis even if they did run away.”

“Do you question our professionalism!?”

“You know what we call a so-called professional who hasn’t fought in a real war? A virgin. Oh, but I guess virginity makes you more valuable when you’re a girl, huh? Heh heh.”

The sexual turn of the conversation seemed to actually calm the twins down. Using such things to lower a target’s defenses was a kunoichi technique, so this must have put them in work mode.

“But don’t you forget, blondie . You might be working on that Dejima-like reclaimed land, but a doll with those looks is only allowed to strut around working as shogunate spy – instead of being hunted down by them – because you do the work we give you. You won’t like to find out what happens if you can’t manage it. You can guess what might happen if you lose the shogunate’s backing in this isolationist age, can’t you? No one from overseas can ever be truly trusted and there’s not going to be a formal investigation. We’ll have you sit down, place heavy stones on your lap, and keep doubling the weight until you confess to letting the criminals escape.”

“Kh.”

“Get the picture now? You call yourselves kunoichi? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just a fancy word for gloomy cowards without the guts to make a frontal assault. Ninjas have no honor. At best, you’re the gofers for us samurai. If you get it, then work like a workhorse and guide us to our prey. We’re using someone for target practice – you can decide whether it’s them or you. So please, even I’d find it a little distasteful to slice up my formal colleagues and make mincemeat out of them. Gya ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

…Sugiyado Souha could not abandon them.

That was the honest thought on his mind as he clenched his teeth and saw those two bite their lips while pale in the face. This would have been so much easier if they were soldiers pursuing his students after being manipulated by the shogunate’s darkness. But now that he knew the reality of the situation, he had one more hurdle to overcome. He could not just fool these twins and rescue his students. That would place a great debt on the shoulders of these twins who had done nothing wrong. And in the most unfair way imaginable.

So he made up his mind.

He had one more burden to carry, which put him one step closer to death. Just like during that final mission, he was surrounded by an unpleasant atmosphere that seemed to be leading him toward a major failure.

Nevertheless, he did not break. He only quietly updated his list of objectives.

He had to rescue both the pursuing twins and his runaway students.

And he had to escape with them all.

### 3: Battle Preparation Delivery

A smooth rustling sound could be heard.

It came from Hanasawa Bara, a girl with a curvy body and overly-bright red hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls to increase the volume. She had brushed her hair back from a face of such beauty that it would have looked at home awash with a spotlight on center stage, not as a ninja who lived in the shadows.

Her red dress and the ample figure showing through were enough to steal away the starring role in this space.

This elicited an exasperated comment from Nantou Hoozuki, the cool beauty with a long silver ponytail who was riding her lightweight but powerful off-road motorcycle called Countless Calamities. She had never changed out of her ninja outfit.

“That’s quite the weapon you have there.”

“I could say the same about you.”

Bara had woven coils in to her ringlet curls to transform her hair into a sort of linear motor and coilgun. With a total of 18 of those, she could cover all directions around her, but they were also hidden in a blind spot that let her slip past ordinary checkpoints and police searches that only thought to check people’s pockets and bags. It truly was the ideal form of a ninja.

They could fire the Candy Needles made from melting sugar and letting it harden with poison mixed in or the Final Cannon that used an armor piercing needle of depleted uranium alloy, and the entire weapon was known as the Serpent Monster.

“Sensei got mad when I named it the Gorgon. He said I had to go with mythological names for everything or nothing.”

“You made him mad on purpose for some fun, didn’t you?”

“How is that any different from the way you make him grimace by naming each of your bike’s new transformation gimmicks Technique 1, Technique 2, Technique 3, and so on?”

“I just want to make it harder to come up with a countermeasure based on the name, but he’s more of a stickler for aesthetics than you would think.”

“He’s a romanticist. The way he makes it so obvious despite refusing to admit it out loud is so unbearably cute.”

“You mean like that scarf he always keeps around his neck? Well, at least I’ve never seen him stick a scroll in his mouth and hop onto a giant toad.”

“You just know he wishes he could, though.”

“I’m glad he isn’t the type who accepts genetic tampering as ethical. I mean, he gets so obsessed he’d take it way too far once he got started.”

The teenage girls chuckled together in a way that no one would have guessed was part of some dangerous criminal plot.

The four of them had not come from the same place before seeking out Sugiyado Souha’s ninja instruction. They each had their own reason for leaving their peaceful lives, moving into the shadows, and aspiring to be ninjas who got by with trickery. They relied on each other in battle, but they had not seen everything of each other’s lives.

The only one who had done that would be Sugiyado who had gently gotten them to open up their scarred hearts.

Hanasawa Bara came from a noble family and never should have found herself in the shadows. But in order to prop up the samurai families, the shogunate had ordered the number of noble families to be reduced. When her family had been crushed and she had found herself under Sugiyado’s tutelage, she had wondered how she had ended up stripped of her former status and asking a younger boy to teach her.

But when he had noticed she was not committing herself to her studies and training, he had not jumped straight to scolding her. He had instead smiled and told her she did not have to change who she was.

He had simply told her to get the job done. If she could become a ninja who could use her dazzling beauty as a weapon, then she could stay true to herself. So he told her to think up a way to do that.

“…”

In a show of that mature sex appeal, she crossed her arms and alluring lifted her large chest from below, but she narrowed her eyes like a pure maiden daydreaming.

Believers in sports engineering might laugh it off as silly idealism and wishful thinking, but that rose who stood on the front line could tell. The more harsh the scene, the more important and reassuring it was to have a solid sense of “yourself” as a central pillar.

She was certain she had him to thank for not becoming a machine that had missions mechanically inputted and did nothing more than spill blood with blades and shurikens. When her heart had felt in tatters and she had given up on any path other than throwing it out, it was undoubtedly Sugiyado Souha who had held onto it, gradually picked up the pieces and repaired the cracks, and restored her into someone who could find friends and laugh with them.

He had saved her.

No amount of money filling her bank account as payment for missions would ever have fulfilled her heart. She never could have restored herself with that. But he had shown her the way. She was willing to say that her current life was even more fulfilling than life in that luxurious estate before she had become a ninja. She no longer thought of it as a fall or a collapse. She had used those empty days of nothing but wealth as a stepping stool to reach an even greater place.

So now it was her turn.

He could call it insolent if he liked and he could raise his fist and tell her not to do this, but she still wanted to save her master. She wanted to give him the life-saving thing he had taught her. That was the whole of her motivation here.

She toyed with her precious hair and showed off her beauty to the world while holding her head high and asking a question.

“Is it time for the next step?”

“Yes. Let’s get this over with.”

### 4: Buried Ninja Sword

After transferring to a different vehicle in an underground parking garage, they arrived at Sugiyado Souha’s apartment in an ordinary car.

He had been accepted onto their side, so he would be sleeping in that tanker truck from now one. But first, he needed to pack a bag with clothes and whatnot.

He gave a self-deprecating smile while propping himself up on the shoulder of Suiren, one of the twins in white dresses with bold slits.

“So this place was already being monitored, huh?”

“Yes. But only by other spies. Do not worry; none of those samurai were spying on you.”

“Ha ha. Yeah, I don’t want to see one of them hiding behind the vending machine.”

Guren went in ahead of them to make sure the place was safe and then the other two entered the rundown room.

It felt so terribly nostalgic now.

It was a lot like returning home from a trip. The furniture was in the same place and the amount of dirty laundry had not changed, but it did not smell like home.

“I checked around, but there is an awful lot of laundry and trash bags piled up in here.”

It had gotten this bad in just the few days since Ouka and the others had cleaned up for him.

“This cluttered world is unbefitting of an instructor. You will be away from home for a while, so it would be best to clean this up now.”

He was just about to beg them not to expect much from a guy living on his own, but then the twin kunoichis got to work on the towering mountain range themselves.

“Hold on. I can’t have shogunate spies do this kind of work for me.”

“Our duty is to fulfill whatever task is required of us, regardless of what it entails.”

“Oh? What is this? Um, a value pack of Happy Churn???”

“Oh, if you ladies are not prepared for the difficult path that awaits you, I recommend stopping here. You must keep strong or you will be dragged into the abyss before you know it. Don’t blame me if you try one and are addicted for life.”

Meanwhile, they split into a trash bag team and a laundry team and got to work. Having those composed girls emitting a silent pressure while observing what brand of underwear he wore was unbelievably awkward, but he had been placed on the trash bag team. He could not approach them, so he could not use his ninja techniques to surreptitiously obstruct their work.

“Garbage pickup is tomorrow morning, but we cannot wait until then. We can report a tree branch cut down on the roadside out front and have them send in a truck now.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Eliminating those mountains made the space feel a lot bigger.

He was reminded of how Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, and the others had paid him a surprise visit, rudely said he would get sick living in a place like this, and cleaned everything up for him.

Also, the better view of the room had brought something into view.

A sword in a black scabbard and wrapped over and over by a very long decorative cloth sat in a corner of the room. Unlike ordinary Japanese swords, this one had no curve.

Instead of simply cutting down an enemy, it could be used to create footholds while climbing tall fences, it could be used as a grappling hook for scaling walls by unwrapping the cloth that had a weight at the end, and it could be held out ahead in the dark to check for obstacles.

Shirazaya Guren gulped, sighed, and spoke in an impressed tone.

“Is that a ninja sword?”

“It’s called Salvation & Punishment. It’s too much for me now, but I never had a chance to get rid of it. I’ve just kind of held onto to it even though I have no use for it.”

“That alone shows how much you once relied on it. I see nothing to be ashamed of there.”

Normal(?) ninja swords were made shorter than the average Japanese sword for easier use indoors, but this one was actually longer than average. All of his personal idiosyncrasies must have been woven into its design. It was obvious to everyone that he was fond of the blade.

Guren narrowed her eyes while carrying the last trash bag to the front door.

“Can I ask your story?” said Sugiyado while leaning against the wall.

“It is not a pleasant one.” She toyed with her beautiful blonde hair and let out a slow breath. “We were in an airplane crash. We never had any business with this isolationist country, but once we were swept onto the shore here, we had no choice but to stand on our own two feet. Fortunately, we had talent. Talent at hiding in the shadows and laying out strategies. That has allowed us to avoid the horrors that you heard the samurai mention.”

“…”

“I will not lay all blame at the feet of this era or this nation’s system. There are times when I am so engrossed in a mission that I forget all else. I have enjoyed using the shogunate’s power to act as the hunter. Some of those we have hunted down were blonde-haired girls younger than me. But this is the life we wanted because it suits us. That is all there is to it.”

It was true that most everyone who dedicated themselves to the shadows had some kind of circumstances leading them in that direction. Sugiyado Souha did and so did his students.

But there was something different about Shirazaya Guren’s story that she told with a tremor in her small throat.

They had not chosen this.

The bracelets on the sisters’ wrists likely tracked their location.

It was like they were given money and forced to make more and more high-rate, high-risk gambles with it, but if they screwed up and ended up in the red just once, they would be sold off themselves. Pointing at the losers of those gambles and telling these sisters they had destroyed those people’s lives seemed wrong somehow. At the very least, those samurai, who had grown fat on taxes, were in no position to say it.

“Have you ever wanted to return home?”

“I dream of it every night. But it simply isn’t possible anymore.”

She seemed to be referring to more than just the country’s isolationist policies.

Normally, other countries wanted Japan’s technology badly enough to repeatedly send in scouts and take military action against the isolationist country. They should have rejoiced if some of their own people returned after infiltrating so deep into Japan.

So why would it not work that way?

“Didn’t I say we have already cut down several people with this same hair color? The knights across the sea have us on a list of dangerous individuals, so we could never live a normal life even if we did make it back to our homeland. Without the government’s backing, we would be branded traitors and I imagine we would actually be in even more danger than staying here.”

There had to be more to it than that.

The higher ups had almost certainly intentionally sent those twins to hunt down their compatriots. Both to test their loyalty and to leave the shogunate as the only place they could ever hope to survive, thus making them easier to control. It was a lot like a gang initiation ritual in which the initiate had to shoot a police officer or teacher to cut off any hope of help and isolate them from society.

These were victims.

No matter how much power they might have, Sugiyado could not think of any other word with which to describe these twins.

### 5: Smokey Maze

Once all the necessary preparations were complete, Sugiyado Souha was finally invited into the tanker truck that acted as the investigation team’s headquarters.

(Now, then. It’s 3PM – time for the banks to close.)

He checked the wall clock while losing himself in thought.

He had already gotten himself involved and taken a sympathetic view of the twins, but he could not forget that Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao had no future if the twins captured them.

He had to prevent the investigation from making any progress while still allowing Guren and Suiren to save face.

That would be the best plan. Perhaps it was best described as allowing them to fail gracefully.

He toyed with the large scarf over his mouth as he thought.

(Ouka’s group is headed to the stock exchange’s server room now that they have a copy of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka’s biometric data. They’re after the classified information secretly stored there because the shogunate is afraid to keep it too close at hand. A normal bank wouldn’t have the capacity to store that. Ouka’s group thinks the secrets of my final mission are hidden there.)

That much was correct.

But he could not allow Shirazaya Guren and Suiren to discover that answer.

How could he create a convincing false answer on top of that?

(Ouka’s group made an appearance at the airport and Shitou Kyouka has gone missing. That much is already known.)

Since the entire event had been fixed and the top idol was planned to win from the beginning, she would not have left early. That would normally be seen as a slight to the sponsors who had paid a lot of money setting it all up.

Also, the twins knew about the poison Sugiyado had been given there. At this point, trying to claim he had nicked himself with his own poisoned blade would only arouse suspicions against him.

If anyone could not put two and two together here, he would honestly be impressed.

(I suppose the best option is to send them in the wrong direction when deciding why my students abducted the idol.)

But only if saving his students was his only goal. If he set up a spectacular failure for Guren and Suiren, who could say what those cruel samurai would do to them.

He had to send them in the right direction but have Ouka’s group stay just one step ahead of them. Also, the reason for the delay had to come from the armored samurai, not the kunoichis. And the failure had to so obviously be theirs that they could not possibly shift the blame.

That was no easy task, but that was why it would win him a reward as great as the survival of both sides. It was worth doing.

(Those girls clearly wanted to abduct Shitou Kyouka badly enough to use the modular nuclear reactor as bait. What reason can I invent other than the real one? Or to put it another way, what answer would I find a surprise yet still accept as legitimate? Can I up the scale to a level above a nuclear reactor?)

He breathed in and then out.

And he began speaking.

“There may not have been a real reason for it.”

“What?”

Both twins wrinkled their brows.

He himself was unsure if this would hold water, but right now he had to gather speed, like he was pushing a minecart down a sloped track.

“Shitou Kyouka is known even outside the country, right?”

“Y-yes. The Shogunate must think a talented entertainer will help give them a good name because they have taken the unusual step of releasing her songs overseas. Similar to how we can see Hollywood movies and Western action movies here.”

“That makes her the perfect target that even foreigners would recognize.”

He chose his words carefully.

He used the lag in conversation as a “gap” to draw the twins’ attention.

“I don’t know what led those girls to strike back at the Shogunate, but I doubt even Elite Ninjas could last long against an entire nation while on their own. They need someone new to back them.”

“You mean…?”

“This was a demonstration. By abducting a world-famous idol, they’re advertising that their skills can help anyone hoping to attack this isolationist nation. For that matter, the original modular nuclear reactor may have been intended as a souvenir. Those people circling the archipelago’s skies in their giant flying aircraft carriers must be dying to get their hands on some new ‘made in Japan’ merchandise.”

“You’re saying they did all this not for some physical cash or diamonds, but to create intangible connections!?”

“I doubt that’s their only objective, of course. You two should know all too well how much a powerful backer increases your options. They could flee overseas and enjoy themselves there, or they could use all the new equipment and funding to continue sneaking around Japan and cause trouble here.”

“…”

The psychological scars of their past experiences helped make it sound all the more real to them. Anyone other than those twins might not have fallen silent like this.

He did not let it show on his face, but he apologized to them in his heart.

“So once they have made contact with the knights and musketeers waiting out at sea and in the skies, they hope to throw a big party. This is going to be much bigger than what four individuals can do. They will invite those bored foreign berserkers into the country to start a legit war. Guren, Suiren, give me a list of the important targets those heavily-equipped knights will likely attack first. If any of those are facilities or people that Ouka’s group would want to see attacked, then that’s probably what they’re after.”

He upped the scale again.

The modular nuclear reactor was a nuke, but it was still small. Even if it was made to explode, its destruction and contamination would only cover a diameter of a few hundred meters. The word “nuke” held a lot of power, but when looking at the actual number of people who would be harmed, there were other, crueler ways it could be used.

Now he only had to wait for the enormity of the threat to sink in.

In his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, he peered into the twin kunoichis’ eyes. It took more than a deluge of words to convince someone of something. At times, silence could be a powerful weapon.

“Understood. We will take that into consideration for now.”

“Of course you will. The more options you’re looking out for, the better.” He shrugged while hiding his joy inside. “Then could it be possible they’re after money? Like having the idol agency pay a ransom or something? Or do they have some direct connection to Shitou Kyouka? This might actually be a cheap grudge or jealousy. If not, maybe we should consider the possibility of it being an attack on the airport or idol festival management.”

He rattled off possibilities in quick succession to keep their minds off of any more attractive possibilities than the wrong one he had given already. If Shirazaya Guren and Suiren came up with a list of better theories and even arrived at the stock exchange answer he had to steer them away from, it would sound a lot cheaper if it bordered on the variety of answers he had already given. The weight of words had more of an effect than people thought. It was hard to rid yourself of an impression you had already arrived at.

“I still don’t see why it had to be Shitou Kyouka, but I suppose we should follow the foreign backing theory for now,” said Guren.

“If we narrow our focus down to the front line in New Yokohama Domain, the options look like this.”

While toying with her right earlobe, Suiren added several pins to the map on her laptop.

The water services, the power line in from the mainland, the communication cables, the New Yokohama Aeromonolith broadcast tower, New Yokohama Station, the various Shogunate facilities, and the people given VIP treatment – from samurai to wealthy merchants. The aforementioned stock exchange was even on the list. Seeing it there was enough for his heart to leap in his chest.

But he could not back out now. If he was going to work with the twins to stop his students, he had to guide the Shogunate almost all the way to the goal.

“Here.”

He boldly pointed at one option himself.

It was a location across the street from the stock exchange he could not have them discovering. It was a mere 20m away.

“New Yokohama Mint. Now that new ATMs can detect the Ultra 8 counterfeit money created by the Kingdom, they lost one inroad to gathering foreign capital. But if they gained one of the real printing presses, they could turn all that around. The profit from that would far surpass a black market deal over a mini-nuke. Hand that over when they’re in their time of need and Ouka’s group is sure to earn their praise.”

“But those supposedly have three different tracking devices installed. Even if they gained the plans to the mint and located one, could they really remove all three of them on the spot?”

“Good point. That just means they need some way of instantly destroying all of the sensors without dismantling the device. What the Kingdom wants is the hardware made by expert craftsmen, not the programming inside.”

“?”

The twins both tilted their heads, making their hair extensions sway, so Sugiyado winked and told his biggest lie yet.

“The modular nuclear reactor. Powerful radiation should be able to destroy the circuitry used for the transmitters. If you’re after the components rather than the circuitry, you can wipe out the tracking devices with a burst of radiation. No light or noise necessary.”

### 6: Offline Strategizing

“Mh.”

The underground mall was as complex as a spider web and it connected one giant train station with an entirely different subway station. Extremely-small Shizukuma Asagao groaned at a café there.

The small-faced girl in a white military uniform with a short tight skirt used the fingertips sticking out from her baggy sleeves to operate a handheld game system capable of ordinary internet browsing.

“Alert: a stir is running through the crowds around the stock exchange. They seem to be noticing an oddity in the flow of traffic.”

“Roger that, Asagao. Keep watching via satellite,” said Nantou Hoozuki over the radio. “I’ve confirmed some things while walking around outside. There are an awful lot of vehicles with large enclosed spaces, like a delivery truck, a hot dog stand, a TV broadcast van, and a refrigerator truck. Nothing conclusive yet, but there must be dogs hiding out here. Be on the lookout for heavy equipment they can’t let out in the open.”

“They might all be Shogunate jack-in-the-boxes,” said Hanasawa Bara, also over the radio. “But isn’t their formation odd? They are scattered around the building, but they don’t seem to be surrounding the stock exchange.”

Financial institutions closed even earlier than the schools. Even regional banks closed their general teller windows at 3. Maintenance workers like cleaners and electricians might still go there, but it seemed unlikely a hot dog vendor could do business there in the evening.

“Maybe they intentionally left a hole in their security because they figured we would leave after scoping the place out if they were too obviously surrounding the place,” suggested Asagao who was acting as the host of this chat.

“It might be Sensei,” said Ouka.

“If so, why? To capture us? Or to let us escape?”

Either way, it was rare to find a complete answer on the scene. More often than not, there was no correct answer. They could only use what information they had to search out the most likely candidates and make their choices based on whether they had the upper hand or not, whether they could take an optimistic or pessimistic view, and whether they were on the offensive or the defensive. Instead of using the flexible thought processes of a human, the best way to survive was to use simple, insect-like thought processes: did they smell anything sweet or not, was there light there or not, was the ground wet or not, etc.

“It doesn’t really matter. This isn’t enough to get rid of ush!”

“Hm? Is there something wrong with your tongue, Ouka?”

Small Asagao frowned, but there was no response for a while. And when one came, it was from Bara instead.

“Oh? Having a flashback, you dirty girl? Was kissing Sensei that much fun?”

“What!?” “What!?”

Hoozuki and Asagao had not heard about that and shouted on reflex, but Ouka remained silent and Bara must not have understood the power of the bomb she had unleashed.

“Okay, technically she gave him the antidote mouth-to-mouth. Besides, greeting him with a kiss is perfectly normal. I do it all the time.”

“What!!!???” “What!!!???” “What!!!???”

Ouka snapped out of her confusion to join the shouting this time. Bara was referring to how she would surprise him with a touch to the cheek, forehead, or top of the head while gently biting his neck, but she intentionally left that part out.

Bob cut Asagao trembled in her seat.

“I can’t believe this. Now I want to know how Sensei has been interpreting my ‘I’m going to marry you when I grow up’ magic spell!”

“You’ve been abusing your cuteness to seduce him too?” “You’ve been abusing your cuteness to seduce him too?” “You’ve been abusing your cuteness to seduce him too?”

Based on this, it seemed likely that Hoozuki, the impeccable cool beauty biker girl, had prepared a special helmet for a certain someone and wore a special perfume when letting that certain someone ride with her.

The four girls began seriously thinking they should have gotten to the bottom of those questions before leaving him, but what was done was done. They would have to ask him after solving this problem and reclaiming his honor.

They were willing to fight against everything to do that.

Even if someone they respected from the bottom of their hearts was included in that. They had to figure out whether this formation was meant to rescue them or meant to trap them.

Kuhou Ouka made a decision on her end of the radio.

“It doesn’t matter what it was meant to do because we can slip past this either way.”

### 7: Hidden Battle

Sugiyado Souha left the tanker truck’s maintenance hatch and entered the evening financial district.

He hid his mouth behind his largish scarf and immediately commented on what he saw.

“That is way too conspicuous.”

“Believe me, it’s a miracle those Azure Dragon armored samurai went along with their ‘sit and stay’ command at all.”

“They do not understand why they should ever have to hide themselves. Words are meaningless with someone who uses their heavy equipment to brute force their way through frontal assaults.”

The blonde twins in white dresses remained expressionless, but there were obvious barbs in their words. He hoped these apparent complaints were proof that they were opening up to him at least a little.

(The vehicles everywhere are partially blocking the flow of foot traffic, but nothing has happened to cause a panic yet.)

That was good news. Not even he could hide the true target if there was an explosion in front of the stock exchange.

He glanced across the road at the square smart building that was the mint.

“Where are the presses?”

“Thanks to the Third Economic Measures, they apparently must print a trillion yen by the end of the month, so they rejected our request that they stop the presses and remove them to a safe location.”

That was the policy that had been deemed a disaster even by the sports newspapers sold at the train stations. While it was true foreign exchange rates were of secondary importance given the nation’s isolationist policies, this was still taking it much too far. It was a miracle hyperinflation had not already set in.

“Good grief. So we’re stuck defending the place against four of the shogunate’s Elite Ninjas?” he asked. “Our cutting-edge equipment can’t exactly run or hide.”

“They might be former Elite Ninjas, but they are on the run now. Do not forget that,” said one twin.

“Officially recognized spies are on a different level from those unrestrained dangerous elements,” said the other.

When they had nowhere else they could go, their pride in that position would naturally grow. It was sad once you knew how it worked. That samurai may not have just been talking about their looks when he called them dolls.

“By the way, why are you acting like my bodyguards or something?”

“Have you already forgotten? At the idol festival, those runaway ninjas went out of their way to attack you, their old teacher.”

“It is unclear if they were afraid you would share information with us or if they simply felt betrayed, but that set a precedent. If you show up on the scene, they will attempt to contact you separate from their plan’s timetable. Thus, we have deemed it best to work with you this time.”

He could not criticize the plan, no matter how much he wanted to.

If not for the fact that he wanted to end this without either side going down, it was a decent plan.

But as accurate as their reasoning was, their presence still restricted his freedom, effectively checkmating him.

He had heard records related to his final mission were hidden in the stock exchange’s server since the Shogunate wanted to keep that at arm’s length. Letting Ouka’s group find that would be devastating. They would be hunted down and eliminated by the Shogunate. It was important to prevent those four from encountering Shirazaya Guren and Suiren, but he also had to stop them.

So…

“Seems like overkill, but I won’t say no to a double date.”

“That is not what that means. Joke if you like, but try to use your romance terms correctly.”

Just as Suiren said that while flicking at her right ear, Sugiyado walked forward and kicked up a small rock with the heel of his shoe. He moved his hand behind his short-sleeved dress shirt’s back to silently catch it, hold it tight, and make up his mind.

With a snap of his wrist, he chucked it toward a large window nearby.

The twin ninjas would not know how deadly an attack it had been, but they would know that a reinforced glass window had loudly shattered right next to them.

So if he added some dramatic flavoring, they would buy it.

“Sniper! Get down!!”

He shouted a warning and shoved Suiren behind a car. She was a lot lighter than he had expected, so she gained too much speed and her dress’s skirt flipped up, but it was too late to redo that now. Guren gulped nervously and leaped in the same direction to support her sister, but he dove the other way to hide behind a convertible parked on the curb.

Still behind cover, the boy in a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants pointed toward a random building. The blonde twins looked that way to check almost on reflex, but the instant their eyes were off him, he used the air pressure kunai in his hand to break the door window of the convertible he was hiding behind.

Suiren ducked down and spoke.

“I did not see any light or hear any noise. They may be using subsonic rounds.”

“Gunfire makes Ouka the most likely suspect. Her hunting gun doesn’t use any rifling, so she uses fletching to stabilize the rounds when firing long distance. I want to capture at least one of them, so I’ll head that way through the alleys. You two are too far from the next viable cover, so just ask those heavily-armored samurai to rescue you. Their full-body composite armor should be able to deflect anti-materiel rifle rounds. Once they’re with you, make your way to the sniper’s building along a clockwise route. I’ll approach with a counterclockwise route.”

“Understood.”

“Shouldn’t we send one of the samurai with you?”

They let him reject that idea with a simple wave of his hand. They did not want to be indebted to those samurai any more than he did.

With his mouth hidden behind his scarf, he followed his supposed plan by diving from behind the convertible and into the nearby alleyway, but he ignored the plan after that. One wall of that alleyway was the stock exchange. If he was going to use the confusion to get inside, he would have to do it now.

The back entrance was a steel door with a heavy-duty electronic lock, but he ignored the keypad altogether. He instead focused on the thick communication cables running vertically along the wall. He used a Fierce Fang to slice through a few of those and attached them to his phone.

The inside the of the building was naturally filled with security cameras, but if he cut the footage, the dark screens would tell the security room something was amiss. The general solution seen in movies and dramas was to play an endless loop of the same footage, but that was not as easy as fiction made it seem.

(I’ll set the brightness to maximum.)

Modern pros would take this route.

The footage would continue to be recorded, but he secretly altered the settings. By changing the contrast between the bright areas and the dark areas, he made it impossible to see anyone lurking in the shadows. That would leave no unnatural changes in the length or number of video files.

Once the necessary preparations were complete, it was time to head in.

He stuck the Fierce Fang’s tip between the door and wall at the upper end of the knob and released the power of nitrogen. He could pry open the thick hatch of a military tank with this thing, so it neutralized the lock by physically breaking the thick latch.

The door slowly opened inward.

There was no need to discuss something as basic as fingerprints at this point. Even without gloves on, coating your entire hand with a thin layer of clear nail polish was enough to deal with that. You would be sorely mistaken if you assumed everyone working shady jobs wore thin rubber surgical gloves or black leather gloves. Wear something like that on a midsummer beach or in a sauna and the police would be asking you a lot of questions.

He glanced down at his fingers.

(The trick is finding a good product that properly eliminate your fingerprints without losing the feeling of your fingertips.)

As soon as he set foot inside, he could tell there were still people here.

All trading was done for the day, but that did not mean everyone immediately left and the building’s lights were shut off. This was when the real work began in maintaining the giant communications system used to perform ten thousand transactions every second. There were a lot of actual maintenance workers and a lot of security personnel keeping an eye on things to ensure none of them inserted malware on the system or swapped out a circuit board. Allowing a malicious device to be hooked up here would cause far more confusion than at a pachinko parlor, so this much security was to be expected.

(How will they actually go about this?)

Sugiyado thought to himself while carefully staying in the darker parts of the staff corridors and set up some traps along the way.

He quietly reeled in some fishing line as he continued.

(They stole the biometric data of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka, but word can get around fast and someone might already know she went missing. Especially people who deal with stocks and trading. If they strut in wearing a disguise, they could find her account has been frozen and have metal bars drop down to surround them. So how will they avoid that risk while assuming it’s already known she’s gone missing?)

He knew where he had to go.

In addition to the normal reception area occasionally depicted on the TV news, this kind of stock exchange also had a VIP dealing room. The primary advantage was not needing to go through a public server, which increased the transaction speed up by a thousandth of a second. That was too small for normal people to even be aware of, but to reiterate, computer-controlled financial transactions were carried out at a rate of ten thousand per second. So by obtaining one of the small glass-encased booths in there was enough to perform ten transactions for every one a normal person was capable of. In terms of a turn-based RPG or TRPG, that would be like getting ten turns for every one turn the enemy received. That would obviously make you unbeatable.

And again, the end of trading for the day did not mean everyone left the stock exchange. In a world where a system malfunction could mean the loss of billions in a single day, it was not uncommon for people to only allow their own hired workers to work on the machinery in their booth.

This was where it got interesting.

It was also not uncommon for the VIPs arriving at the exchange to not be the best with computers. For example, with an idol who was not all that knowledgeable in the fields of finances or computer science, the exchange workers would salivate at the chance to “assist” and put their precious client’s mind at ease.

(There they are.)

“Yes. Like I said, I would like to know what is going on with my money.”

He heard a girl’s voice that was not all that loud but traveled oddly far.

But this was not Bara who excelled at disguises and camouflage.

“My mother usually handles this money, but the account is in my name. Just in case, I thought it would be best to know the basics of how all this works.”

In fact, this was not even a disguise.

Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki were there.

The two ninjas were waiting behind her in work jumpsuits with baseball caps pulled down to cover their eyes. Their young age was no reason to suspect them in an age of meritocracy where people often dropped out of school to get a job when they had the talent for it. Going after a stock exchange server from the outside would be difficult, but the hurdle was much lower when you physically snuck inside. With some advice from Shizukuma Asagao who was skilled at cyber attacks, they would be able to work their way in pretty deep. Perhaps even to the secret Shogunate data that the actual exchange workers were unaware of.

In other words…

(Instead of copying her biometric data, they manipulated her into bringing them here herself?)

Word would have gotten around that Shitou Kyouka had disappeared, yet here she was in the flesh and not just someone pretending to be her. Even if the exchange had received word already, they could not afford to be suspicious here. Customers were the top priority even at a stock exchange, so they had no possible excuse for turning her away if she was the real one.

The most they could do was view her companions with suspicion, but if no weapons were drawn, no threats were made, and Shitou Kyouka herself introduced them as her trusted engineers, they could not kick them out either.

The entire point of the VIP dealing room was to use money to trample on the entire concept of fairness. Just like an F1 driver would get mad if they were given a pit crew other than their personal team and a businessman would be furious to receive some unknown court-appointed attorney instead of their personal lawyer during a major trial, finding fault with someone’s engineers could be seen as an attempt at obstruction.

Also.

Finding a way to control a specific individual or group through external means was apparently a romantic ideal on the level of immortality, time travel, and world domination. Various scientists had worked at that one for over 3000 years. The list of attempted methods was endless: incense, drugs, parasites, bacteria, bioelectricity, magnetism, nutrients, sleep deprivation, subconscious stimuli using low-frequency waves or vibrations, patterns of color or sound, etc.

And Sugiyado Souha could make an educated guess as to what his students had done here.

(Is this a form of shadow binding?)

That ninja technique stabbed a short sword or shuriken into the target’s shadow to keep them from moving. It was actually a way of invading someone’s personal space so they felt a pressure that made them hesitant to approach any further – and did so in an instant using the powerful presence of a deadly blade. It was even thought to make people submit to your will on a fundamental level. Anyone would lose the will to fight and fall silent if they had a gun pressed to their head or a blade tip to their heart. This was a lot like a compressed or instantaneous version of that. It affected them before they were even aware of it on a conscious level.

To repeat, this was the same shock that people felt with a gun pressed to their head or a blade to their heart.

And in that state, people would obviously obey any instructions they were given instead of just standing still.

(But this is an awfully long-lasting example of shadow binding. This kind of trick was always the favorite of Asagao since she doesn’t fight directly.)

He was impressed, but his goal was still to end this without losing his former students or the Shirazaya twins.

Unfortunately, he did not have it in him to focus on anything more than that. He had set some things up on the way here, so now he only had to make the decision.

He gave a tug on a long, long piece of fishing line.

As soon as a Fierce Fang was dislodged from the wall, it finished severing a power cable there and the entire windowless floor was plunged into inky darkness.

This was a stock exchange where billions of yen were moved around in transactions made at a rate of ten thousand a second, so they were bound to have backup power. The darkness would last two or three minutes at the absolute longest, but that was enough to engage in a battle without anyone else seeing it .

He ignored all of the presences moving far too obviously in the darkness. A professional ninja would not be that easy to detect. Those were the ordinary VIPs.

He pulled out a new kunai in each hand and leaped more than ran on top of the office desks and reinforced glass booth dividers to take the shortest route toward his students.

The ability to move as easily in darkness as in light was the most basic skill for and true essence of a ninja.

For example, there was an ancient technique of holding your ninja sword’s scabbard out ahead and slowly walking. By feeling the wall before you ran into it, you could quietly avoid it. And if you came across a person, you could finish them off with a thrust of the blade before they could cause a scene.

Sugiyado Souha did something similar here.

By paying careful attention, he could see small flashing lights similar to starlight. Those were the sparks of static electricity that were especially common with long hair. If he focused on what mattered, he could tell where the kunoichis were.

He attacked as if jumping down on them from directly above.

The entire space had gone dark, but he definitely felt the pressure of two gazes looking up at him.

“Sound.”

“Smell.”

Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki kindly explained how they had done it. Then multiple blades intersected. Bara used her hair guns made from the solenoid coils woven into her ringlet curls. The darts she fired were designed to confuse people in a non-visual environment by producing ultrasonic waves with the special grooves carved into them. The sound was similar to a dog whistle and the weapon was known as Ringing Ears.

Hoozuki used a combination cross shuriken given plenty of force by placing it between the tires of her folded-up off-road motorcycle in a process similar to a pitching machine. She was using an engine, but by padding it on the level of a gun’s silencer, she had eliminated almost all the sound.

Their dual attacks crashed into his thrown air pressure kunai in midair, sending orange sparks everywhere. For a brief moment, that blossom in the dark burned the ninjas’ beautiful outlines into his retinas like with a camera’s flash.

(I only threw it with my arm muscles. That isn’t enough for a direct competition with Bara and Hoozuki’s powered weapons!!)

He accepted his disadvantage here.

If he was going to give up just because he did not have the upper hand, he never would have come here in the first place.

(Hoozuki’s attacks can break the sound barrier and Bara’s coilgun can reach Mach 7.5 when she uses the max power of her Final Cannon using depleted uranium alloy. …But what does that matter? I have nothing to fear from a projectile that won’t hit me!!)

He landed and rolled to the side while pulling a kunai from his lower back. He heard a roar of air in response. They too had move to the side, so their paths were drawing a large circle.

There were plenty of simple ways of peeling back the veil of darkness, like anti-personnel radar and IR goggles. Hoozuki in particular could install all sorts of gadgets on Countless Calamities. But Sugiyado concluded that was not the case here. Using the simple enhancements of a machine made you susceptible to disturbance and deception tactics using chaff or flares. He doubted they would rely on something like that in a once-in-a-lifetime battle.

(In the end, they’ll rely on their own senses. That much won’t change.)

There was no obvious exchange of words at this point. Naming yourself before battle could be left to the combat-obsessed samurai who did not have to hide themselves. That could be handled once you had won and secured your safety.

The girls had not forgotten his teachings.

Ironically, that was what made them such a great threat here.

(I should target Hoozuki first. Because she uses that off-road bike as a giant launching gadget, I can get it to destroy itself by lodging a Fierce Fang in there and messing with the transfer of force. Bara detects her target via sound, so the loud noise should affect her more. I can use that to deal with her.)

Bara and Hoozuki could both fight on the level of a tank or fighter craft when at full power, but that destructive force and penetrative power could work against them too. Their job here was to acquire the Shogunate’s unofficial classified data hidden in the financial transaction server, so they could not afford to destroy that device with a stray shot before their work was complete.

(Then again, I’m in similar situation myself since my Fierce Fangs can be used against tanks, but I can’t afford to hurt my cute students with them.)

They had to be finishing their calculations on how to get at him too. After all, ninja battles rarely lasted long. The very next move would change things significantly.

Yet he was interrupted by something else.

It came from his earphone.

“Yellow Dragon 00 to all units.”

(Hm? Is that Guren or Suiren???)

“We cannot find Advisor at the base of the building designated as our rendezvous point. I repeat, we have lost track of Advisor.”

They played by the rules far too much.

He considered risking a transmission during the confusion to invent some reason why he was running late, but things took a turn for the worse.

“All units, please prepare for the worst. We must assume Advisor was attacked like last time, so put together a search team immediately. Select personnel from White Tiger, Black Tortoise, Azure Dragon, and Vermilion Bird Units and follow the path Advisor is thought to have followed.”

“I will continue to the rooftop to secure the sniper there while Guren joins the search team. We must fulfill our allotted roles. Armored samurai, it is time for the combat you so love.”

He thought not just his throat but his lungs had gone dry. At this rate, they would make it in here. Even if they did not think this was the true target, they might search all of the nearby buildings just to be thorough.

That cut off any hope of escape for Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki.

What would happen if they were surrounded by multiple armored samurai?

With Gatling guns, grenade launchers, and rocket launchers, those warriors were embodiments of firepower, so if they pushed in en masse, even his Elite Ninja students could be overpowered and turned to mincemeat. It was not an issue of strength; this was an entirely different type of combat.

He had no time.

(It would be quicker if I did something, but that would arouse suspicion. A call from me is a card I can only play once, so I don’t want to use it up right away.)

He had to make a decision.

He changed direction in the darkness and jabbed his elbow in the gut of a wandering civilian guard to swiftly knock him unconscious.

His goal was the radio in the guard’s hand.

He made sure to spray a borrowed bottle of deodorant onto the microphone to alter his voice on the transmission before sending it out on the standard guard frequency that anyone could pick up.

“Alert, alert! Wires and a glass bottle spotted near Exit A4. It appears to be an acid bomb, so don’t touch it!! Even environmental suits can be melted through with aqua regia or hydrofluoric acid!!”

That would stop the armored samurai. Their banana-thick fingers were not suited for precise work and, as well-protected against explosive blasts and bullets as they were, they should feel an almost superstitious fear of chemical corrosion.

The back entrance would garner suspicion and everyone, including the bomb squad, would focus on it, but that was fine.

“We will be activating the ventilation ducts in preparation for the worst, so stay clear of the ventilation ports on the outside walls! Acidic gas could escape from there, so you’ll be killed if you’re close by!!”

Needless to say, those ducts would be Bara and Hoozuki’s escape route. No one would want to check inside there until the presence of an acid bomb had been completely refuted.

Now he only had to take one more step into danger.

He moved up alongside his students in the dark and whispered one quick comment to them.

“Do what is necessary if you want to survive this.”

He could not stay long, so he resumed moving from shadow to shadow.

“(Sensei, why?)”

“(Stop, Bara. Not now!)”

He heard whispered voices in the darkness, but he did not stay any longer.

After slipping out of the dealing room, he discarded the radio.

It did not matter if it was discovered the acid bomb was a ruse as long as it was not revealed who had sent the message. And he had a bigger issue to worry about now.

(I need to invent a reason why I entered this building and I need to let them know I’m safe before they complete their search of the inside.)

His excuse had to be good enough to save him here and preserve his spot on the investigation team. He had to leave them with as few suspicions as possible.

Once out in the hallway, he tugged on the long fishing line to recover the air-pressure kunai he had used for the blackout trap. Then he escaped to the emergency stairs. He was mostly focused on his earphone as he made another transmission, but as himself this time. He put together a few different response patterns in his head because he could not afford a mistake here.

“This is Advisor. Can you hear me, Yellow Dragon 00!”

“Yellow Dragon 00 here. Where are you?”

“In the stock exchange across the street. My route was cut off by their line of fire and I couldn’t make any further progress that way, so I decided to climb atop a nearby building to pursue the sniper on the rooftop level. Play the rest of this by ear!”

“Are you sure you can do that on your own? How do you plan to deal with the sniper even if you do reach the roof?”

They were weirdly worried for him and it was nothing but a nuisance at the moment. He simply had to interpret it as them treating him with care instead of suspecting him.

“We aren’t being targeted with an anti-materiel rifle in the middle of the desert. The range of a sniper rifle in an urban environment full of buildings, is only 100-150m. Meanwhile, the world record with hand-thrown weapons is more than 200m. I could actually hit them using a curved parabolic arc and they could do the same if we’re talking about Ouka’s unrifled Midnight Tempest. She forcibly stabilizes her sniper shots with dart-like fletching, so we’re on even footing here!”

“But…”

“I’m not going for a headshot here. I can use a random downpour of blades to pin Ouka on the rooftop while the rest of you climb to her position as planned. This won’t last forever, so I’m only holding your target in place for you. The sooner you secure the sniper, the less time I have to spend being viewed through their multi-purpose sight!”

“Understood. But you need to provide a report on this afterwards.”

“Gladly, if I live to do so. I’m ending this transmission.”

He had arrived at the rooftop.

He threw open the metal door and looked around.

The entire story about a rooftop sniper had been a bluff meant to get him away from Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s watchful eyes, so he was not going to find Kuhou Ouka up here. And if they found no one up here after he made such a fuss about it, the samurai would likely force him and the twin sisters to take responsibility for the blunder.

But he could not offer them the real Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki in the stock exchange either.

At this rate, they would hold an indiscriminate search of the financial district and his four students would be found. That would undoubtedly lead to bloodshed and that was not what he wanted.

He had to get Guren and Suiren to back down as soon as possible.

And he had to get Ouka’s group to give up on the stock exchange server.

What did he need to get both sides to spontaneously back off without anything appearing unnatural? What did he have to do? He wracked his brains in the short time he had.

(That’s the only option.)

After focusing himself so hard it seemed to take years off his life, he looked up once more.

He had reached a conclusion.

(Guren and Suiren are on official duty here. Soldiers will withdraw if they take an unexpected level of damage.)

He breathed in and out.

(Ouka’s group is doing all this to preserve the honor of someone other than themselves. If they lose that person before their very eyes, they will lose any reason to keep going.)

Was that really the right answer?

Was he wrong about this?

He put his thoughts to words as if checking over every little thing in his head.

(I’m on the investigation team and I’m those girls’ teacher, so both sides will quickly withdraw if I die in some spectacular way.)

### 8: Handmade Diversionary Tactics

There was an etiquette to faking your own death. The most important rule was to prevent anyone from confirming the presence of a corpse until your objective was complete.

If this was an oceanside cliff or a volcanic crater, he would only have to jump in…or throw in a doll disguised as him. But the corpse would not disappear after jumping from a building rooftop. They would quickly check the surface and discover it was a lie.

Which meant…

(I need something that blows up the entire rooftop. It needs to be as flashy as possible. I’m a bit worried on the intelligence front since I’ve been away from those twins, but whether or not I’m going to return to them later on, I need to sow confusion right now.)

Modern buildings had industrial air conditioning units, power transformers, and water heaters installed on the roof. If they shoved all that in the basement, the building would burn from the bottom up if something malfunctioned and no one inside could escape, but if the fire started at the top, the number of casualties would be greatly reduced. That meant he only had to tamper with the gas pipes a little to give him what he wanted.

The problem was explaining who had blown him up and why. Needless to say, he would be framing them for a crime they did not commit.

He had caused enough trouble for Kuhou Ouka’s group already with the nonexistent sniper story, so he did not want to make it even worse. If he took it too far, it could rob his students a chance at returning to their positions as Elite Ninjas.

That meant he had to prepare a different candidate.

(Dammit, I guess I’ll have to get their help with this.)

Some frustration entered his emotions, but his rational mind made a quick decision.

The metal pipe leading to the industrial water heater did not have any kind of valve, so he was forced to pull out a Fierce Fang and stab the tip in to create a small hole. He did not even need to pry it open with the nitrogen. He heard an ominous whistling sound and a unique stench reached his nose. He could sense it clearly even through the scarf.

(This uses city gas instead of propane, so it’s lighter than air. I’ll need to cover it with a sheet or something to gather up enough gas.)

While making that assessment, he spotted a small plastic greenhouse for a home garden on one corner of the roof.

That was when someone else arrived.

The entire rooftop seemed to shake from the weight of all that armor forming a silhouette more like a carnivorous dinosaur than a human.

The standard army grade samurai armor could not fly, but it also looked too large to have fit through the doors all the way up here.

That left just one option.

“Did you use your precious artificial muscles to climb the wall? Not that that means a thing about your own muscles.”

“I don’t care who I’m up against; I just want to get some exercise and fight a real fight. I’m only willing to put up with all these pain-in-the-ass odd jobs if I get a firefight afterwards as a reward.”

The monster with a samurai family crest emblazoned on his chest spoke with a creaking from his giant jaws.

“So what the hell’s all this? I don’t see any sign of the rumored sniper firing on us and I’m detecting the scent of an unnatural gas. …Should I assume this means you’re my reward? As a paper target, I mean.”

Sugiyado Souha did not respond.

More than that, he was honestly relieved. If Guren or Suiren had shown up first, he could not have looked them in the eye.

If he was spotted, he had to do this.

That much was certain.

The worst possible version of that would have been if he had been forced to silence one of those innocent twins.

So.

As long as that was not the case…

“Oh?”

The armored samurai finally noticed something was amiss. His datalink to the other samurai had been silently severed.

There was no need to hide it now.

Sugiyado Souha slowly reached to his back and pulled an air-pressure kunai from below his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt.

There was no need for fear.

Ninjas never played fair. They were generally ordered to find a solution when all hope seemed lost. Their techniques had been polished to the point of earning the name Strategic Martial Arts and they were designed to be used in a dire situation. He found himself in such a situation now and that was the only thing on his mind as he faced that great mass of military weaponry.

“A smokescreen full of metal powder, huh? Scattering aluminum powder to cut off my communications counts as throwing down the gauntlet, right? Were you hoping for a one-on-one duel?”

“If you’re going to name yourself, then hurry it up. I’ll go along with it, but I see no value in that tradition.”

“Hah! I have no name so worthless I’d give it to a lowly gofer like you. Besides, what’s even the point of a male ninja?”

“…?”

“The shogunate takes ‘golden’ kids, poor kids, and kids with certain connections and trains them, but those kunoichis are never worth keeping around in battle. But I do think I can see why those perverts at the top are willing to invest so much money into them.”

“…”

A clear change came over the type of silence coming from Sugiyado.

But the soul protected by thick armor and great firepower failed to notice.

“I mean, they’re creating a bunch of professional ‘women’ who’ve had all proof of citizenship erased. I’d love to know how they’re being trained and what they can do for you with that training! Gya ha, gya ha ha!! Come to think of it, you instructed some of them, didn’t you? Did you get to try them out ahead of everyone else!? How was it? I bet you’re glad you get a taste before they’re all wrapped up and sent to the higher ups! Gya ha, gya ha ha ha ha!!”

The samurai’s crude laughter continued without end, but then he heard something odd.

The dried lips in front of him had moved to form certain words.

“Yes. I am glad.”

That berserker, who had lost his human form inside that thick armor, must not have known what those words meant even in the very end.

Sugiyado Souha’s brain felt like it was on fire, so the words slipped out of him.

“I am so glad you aren’t a good person. Now I can silence you without feeling any guilt whatsoever.”

### 9: Heavy Body, Heavy User

That special combat unit was called Samurai Armor Mk. III – Mountain Beast.

All the necessary armor and motors had been added on atop the human body. That had “just so happened” to make them enormous and it had been declared a success. The wearer’s flesh and blood had gone through a unique change to endure the internal pressure and overall weight, so their body had completely fused with the artificial muscles on the armor’s interior surface and any overhauls or updates to the device literally required major surgery. The armor was not simply removed; it had to be cut off and peeled away. There was no dividing line between flesh and steel and it was the exterior armor panels that divided inside from outside. That was how dedicated they were to combat. Those obsessed freaks had started to forget that they were even human. Protecting their family’s honor and displaying valor in combat was only an excuse at this point.

Those berserkers had so fused with their armor that there were urban legends saying they would produce flesh and steel children if they were to reproduce.

According to their specs, those monsters could instantly move their 600kg weight at speeds exceeding 250km/h. Their bodies had enough power to level buildings and they were also equipped with weapons of war such as Gatling guns and grenade launchers.

Meanwhile, his opponent was a washed-up ninja who could not even carry a 10kg bag.

“Is this some kinda joke? Well?” growled the armored samurai while towering above the boy like a carnivorous dinosaur.

He carefully observed the air-pressure kunai that Sugiyado Souha held.

“Did you think you could dance around my attacks because I’m a big lumbering beast? Well, think again. Do you have any idea how many sensors and radars I’ve got in this thing!? Throw that toy at 10 times the speed of sound and I’ll still shoot it down with 100% accuracy!! Meanwhile, a skinbag like you has no hope of dodging my very first shot!!!!!!”

With heavy metallic sounds, the Gatling gun and grenade launcher on his shoulder took precise aim.

Lasers and microwaves had already accurately located his target. No matter what the boy did, he was doomed to be mincemeat.

And yet.

Nevertheless.

It was a captivating sight.

By the time the ninja flipped through the air, he had already fully dodged the Gatling gun barrage.

“Wha-?”

This was not possible.

This went beyond misjudging the distance with the naked eye. The boy was being tracked and automatically targeted with radars and lasers superior to human senses. Missing even once would have been surprise enough, but the machinegun sprayed 6000 rounds a minute without a single one hitting.

“What the- this thing doesn’t need to be defragged, does it!?”

The armored samurai fired the Gatling gun again, but it could not keep up with Sugiyado Souha as he ran right to left in a circle around his foe. His speed was not even the issue here. The targeting reticle could not keep up and the original lock could not be maintained.

(What? That chaff he used doesn’t explain this. He must have some other way of messing with my sensors.)

Then the samurai noticed something sparkling in the light of the setting sun.

“Water spray? Is that the sprinkler for the home garden!?”

Water could reflect radar waves and obstruct lasers. In fact, weather maps used more than just satellite photos; they also used a weather station’s doppler radar to measure the distribution of clouds.

However, pure raindrops would not fully incapacitate a radar.

Fortunately, this was a home garden. It contained chemical fertilizer and other agrochemicals. Mix those in with the sprinkler and the water might gain some extra effects.

But understanding how it worked did not present a solution.

It would be a bad idea for Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, or Shizukuma Asagao to take on a fully-equipped armored samurai head on.

But things were different for this boy who had been eliminated from the list of Elite Ninjas when he became a Hidden One.

After performing a flip to dodge the ferocious storm of lead, he landed and raced across the roof. He could not be hit by the wild gunfire of the armored samurai whose targeting system had been neutralized.

Meanwhile, the armored samurai sensed no real danger in the boy’s approach.

His guns did not work on the boy, but so what? That was not his only weapon. He still had free use of his 600kg body that could move at speeds greater than 250km/h. His fist alone possessed the power to break down a reinforced concrete building. If the puny human moved too close, he was the one who would be turned to mincemeat.

True, the samurai’s sensors could not get a solid lock, but that just meant he had to use an attack that did not require a mechanical lock. He would aim by eye and kill that exposed flesh that was getting cocky after taking out just one or two cards in the samurai’s deck.

Thick, heavy metal blades extended from the index and middle fingers of that mass of artificial muscle’s right hand. They were a katana and a wakizashi. Those true samurai weapons could cut right through a bank vault door.

“I’ll slice your spine in two!!”

The attack scorched the surrounding air with friction. A flesh-and-blood human had no chance of dodging or defending against this deadly attack.

Nevertheless, the samurai man clearly saw the ninja holding a Fierce Fang air-pressure kunai in each hand and wrapping them around his attack with a spiraling motion.

Before even seeing the result, he was strangely certain that he had screwed this up.

Then his vision flipped around.

At 600kg, that mass of special steel rivaled a bulletproof European car, but he was twirled as easily as a baton.

“Wait, what!?”

Sugiyado had not touched the blades or the armor. The air-pressure kunais’ cartridges had burst and disturbed the air current produced by the blades. Since none of the weight bore down on him, the 10kg weight limit did not show itself here. Yes, that limit was only in theory.

Using those swords had been a mistake.

The samurai could have flailed his arms like a small child to crush that squishy flesh and those brittle bones. He would not even have needed to know any martial arts. But by drawing those swords, he had allowed his enemy to predict their path. When swung at such high speeds, the blades were greatly influenced by the air, so a change there had twisted the samurai’s arm and thrown his entire body around like an airplane flying through turbulence.

Still, was this really possible?

Most modern martial arts were divided into different weight classes because differences in size could be used as a weapon. There were legends of people killing bears or tigers with older martial arts designed for use in actual combat, but the true masters who could accomplish that were few and far between. And most of those were exaggerations made by people hoping to become a legend.

Yet this boy had not hesitated to stand up to a carnivorous dinosaur made of armor and artificial muscles.

Facing a powerful foe required precise movements without the slightest mistake, but that was a lot like performing a tightrope walk between tall buildings. The more it was necessary, the more people’s bodies would freeze up with fear and excitement.

This was a monster.

This boy was a monster.

The armored samurai barely had time to realize that before Sugiyado Souha twisted around and threw multiple Fierce Fangs. They flew true toward the gaps in the joints at the neck and along the torso. They had only been thrown with his physical strength, so they could not pierce through. Only the very tip lightly lodged itself in the gap.

But did you forget about the 600kg weight of that armored samurai? That was twice the weight of a man-eating tiger.

And it was falling.

The Fierce Fangs were caught between the ground and the samurai, so they could not escape that pressure. They were driven further and deeper in. They tore through everything in the way to move from the joint gap and inside the special combat unit.

Just like someone stepping on a rusty nail sticking out of an old board.

“Agwah!? Bwah, gbeh! Ggbgegh!!”

The samurai could only produce a distorted voice and he could no longer get up, suggesting some crucial artificial muscles or nerves had been severed.

“Here’s a lesson for you.” Sugiyado Souha did not bat an eye. “The kunai was not created as a projectile weapon. It’s a ninja tool meant to dig into dirt, snow, or whatever else.”

This time, that “whatever else” was the samurai’s armored body. The kunais played their role perfectly, just like they were digging a hole in a garden.

“W-wipe that smug look off your face. We’re not so different, you know!”

“…”

“You ninjas aren’t fighting without assistance either! You couldn’t! Human strength isn’t enough to throw a 600kg weight through the air! I bet you’re wearing one of those spider silk ninja outfits below your clothes. This is all thanks to the program-controlled assistance of those chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel and those electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders. It all comes down to tech! It’s all about the compatibility between branches of the military! Don’t act so tough just because your spring-loaded rock beat my scissors!!”

But the broken dinosaur’s words ended there.

The boy crouched down and collected something: the buttons that had popped off of his short-sleeved dress shirt during all his vigorous movement. As he did, the shirt fluttered open in front of the stabbed samurai.

There was nothing there.

Not a single piece of technological enhancement.

“A-are you- wait- are you kidding me?”

It was all pure martial arts.

This boy had polished it beyond a tactical level to reach a strategic level. He was one of the Hidden Ones who existed outside the standard ninja ranking system and whose total numbers were unknown. Skills like his were known as “ballistic stealth” because sending him overseas would have political meaning on the level of launching a ballistic missile.

“Are we done here?”

“You had nothing? You really destroyed my Mountain Beast with nothing but your body? Are you kidding me!? I have my honor to preserve!!”

“Are we done here?”

He slowly repeated himself as if to end all of this.

Someone with their family crest emblazoned on his chest desperately continued speaking. He might as well have been begging for his life now.

“Do you have any idea who I am!? You won’t get away with treating me like this!”

“Stop. I thought you had no name so worthless you would give it to a lowly gofer like me.”

That exasperated comment stopped that someone’s words. He had lost the ability to resist even verbally.

The items Sugiyado Souha held were not just traditional digging implements.

Those air-pressure kunais were a combination of instant nitrogen foam and a device used to pry open bent doors. By adjusting the time limit using the dial on the grip, they could trigger 15 tons of force, enough to pry open a tank’s hatch and break the lock. These were handmade tools that would blow off the fingers of anyone else who tried to use them and he had never submitted the design to anyone, including the Shogunate.

Everything he had done was for his adorable students.

But once that wolf threw off all the chains binding him and bared his true fangs and claws, this was what he could accomplish.

With his mouth hidden behind his large scarf, he made one final statement.

“You can go to your grave without anyone knowing your name, monster.”

A moment later, the old wolf’s fangs shredded the flesh of that fat pig from within.

### 10: Pure and Impure

It was all over.

But there never had been a sniper and the scene now contained the dismembered corpse of a samurai who had been monstrous but held a legitimate position in the Shogunate. Everything was going to fall apart at this rate. Sugiyado had to do something and fast. Disturbing the investigation from the twins’ side would have to wait.

(They would have suspected something if I disappeared on my own, but with one of those powerful armored samurai dead, they’ll just assume we were up against someone not even I could handle.)

That enemy would have to be someone with enough firepower to obliterate an armored samurai to the point that the cause of death could not be determined. Not even Ouka could manage that.

But there was someone else who was the perfect candidate for that. Someone who everyone would think of and who everyone would accept as the culprit.

While continuing his work on the gas explosion, he manually dialed a number he had erased from his phone.

“John, are you free right now? I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“I can make time for this. I was wondering how long you were going to make me wait before I could repay you for that old debt. Now, what do you need from this bored knight who was given a court rank by our lovely queen?”

“Please. I’m about to set off one hell of an alarm clock, so can you knights take the blame for me? If it’s known the Kingdom did this, they won’t be suspicious when they find one of their armored samurai was blown up.”

## Chapter 4

### 1: It Refuses to Fade to Sepia

His final mission had been a lot more complex than most everyone thought. After all, it began with the Shogunate and the Kingdom competing to be the first to kill some terrorists, but eventually ended with him being pursued by both the samurai and knights while he tried to protect a small queen of only 10 years old.

It all started with the queen studying abroad in the Dejima-like New Yokohama Domain.

But a faction that wanted to extend those Dejima-like rules onto the mainland threatened the Shogunate with a letter written using the queen’s forged handwriting and took over a university on the island. However, they failed, their deception was discovered, and they had no choice but to hole up on the campus where the queen happened to be.

That faction was quickly suppressed and it looked like the incident was at an end.

But that was only the beginning.

It came down to a series of truly bizarre events, but the Shogunate’s armored samurai and the Kingdom’s armored knights worked hard to thoroughly slaughter that criminal group with their extraordinary firepower. Like some kind of sick military exercise held in the presence of the queen, they seemed to compete to see who could reduce more enemies to mincemeat as if that would earn her favor. Not only that, but they competed to see who could reach the small queen first and worked to obstruct each other, creating a devastating firefight on what should have been an enemy-less battlefield.

She was, after all, the queen of the Kingdom, one of the world’s most powerful nations.

Despite their isolationist policies, the Shogunate officials wanted a diplomatic contact point, and the Kingdom’s military officials were desperate to earn the distinction of having protected their queen. The samurai and knights below the officials went berserk in their attempt to prove their valor in battle. From top to bottom, it was utter chaos, like a game of ultra-heavyweight beach flags where steel and gunpowder blossomed. They were all supposedly working to protect the queen, but no one there was paying any attention to whether or not their stray shots would hit her or their steel feet would trample her slender body.

You would almost have thought they were more interested in retrieving her corpse – or a small piece of it – and bringing it back to their country for some kind of reward. It was like watching people who so revered the blood and bones of the saints that they started physically grappling over their relics.

And for those who wanted to do the Kingdom a favor to create a solid diplomatic connection, maybe that really was enough.

They all obeyed the righteousness and desire within themselves by grabbing for that soft flag with such strength they were bound to crush the life out of it, but very few actually managed to reach the queen.

From the Kingdom, only a knight named John Kniferidge.

From the Shogunate, only a Hidden One named Sugiyado Souha.

One used extraordinary armor and the other used an extraordinary blade.

When Sugiyado saw that 10-year-old queen in the greatest danger of her life due to so many people working to “rescue” her, why had he decided to intervene in a major world event even if it meant betraying his own country? No, why had he decided to protect that small life?

He could not put to words exactly why the scales of his heart had tilted in that direction.

But he felt it had been worth it.

That close yet distant neighbor had said she loved this country built atop outdated isolationist policies and that she had moved there to study abroad so she could learn more about it. That girl had held such an awkward, immature, and flawed ideal in her heart. But as wild as he had been at the time, he had decided she was worth fighting to protect even if it meant betting his entire life on it.

It had ended in a draw.

He had successfully protected the queen, but he had been stripped of his wings as a result.

Yes, because a true monster had shown itself there.

### 2: The View from Outside His World

The sun set and night had fallen, yet a different, irritatingly bright sun had risen to the deck of a tanker anchored out at sea.

“Hello, honored guest!! I hear you have yet again been brought to tears by some lovely ladies. You never change, Mr. Greatest Ninja!! Hah hah!!”

A blond man, who would seem more at home with a soda than tea and who looked more like an American football player than a British gentleman, greeted Sugiyado Souha with booming laughter. He appeared to be wearing a leather jacket over a thick jumpsuit, but that was not technically accurate. It was based off of a flight suit designed to withstand a high-g environment.

Sugiyado sighed.

“You never change either. And thanks for the replacement buttons. The Kingdom’s maids are on a whole other level.”

“Enough flattery. I’ve heard from our Tuxedos how dangerous your kunoichis are.”

The boy showed off his short-sleeved dress shirt with new buttons sewn on.

“Did you cover up the evidence like I asked?”

“Don’t you underestimate my armor. This stuff is so much nicer than those ugly things the cowards in the Shogunate threw together.”

The large blond man winked and tapped some polished armor with the back of his hand. It stood 2 or 3 meters tall. It barely fell into the category of something that was “worn” rather than “piloted” and it was the source of the Kingdom’s high firepower.

That knight’s armor was known as Claiomh Solais.

It was technically categorized as a fortress-class mobile powered suit.

Compared to the samurai’s dinosaur-like combat units, these retained more of a human shape. They were made of beautiful silver armor and a large-caliber railgun designed like a lance. The designers had clearly had some fun with it beyond simply pursuing practicality. It was said that many other countries would attack Japan in order to steal the isolationist country’s technology, but some were better at it than others. The Kingdom was five or even ten steps ahead of everyone else in this particular field.

Although their biggest flaw was the purely military focus of their technology that gave them nothing to give back to the people.

This ship looked like a rundown tanker, but it was actually a disguised carrier ship for this one device.

The other machines standing further back where unmanned musketeers connected to the knight with a datalink, so this was quite the reception.

“As requested, I used this bad boy to scrub that stock exchange’s roof clean, like I was scratching off a lottery ticket. They’ll assume I killed that armored samurai and you will be considered missing in action.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine! I was excited being deployed to the Far East, but I didn’t have much to do here. Now if I’m being honest, I would have loved to continue enjoying this ocean cruise while getting to know the maids better, but if I don’t show some results every once in a while, they’ll send one of those damn inspectors here. In that sense, I should be thanking you. The honor of killing a samurai was exactly what I needed, so don’t worry about it.” John laughed. “Oh, right. You should really speak with Queen Violia about this later. I’ll prepare a secure line for you. If you don’t explain what really happened, I might just be charged with the crime of killing an honored guest.”

“Oh, god. Not that little thing.”

“She’s not so little anymore; her figure is starting to fill out. And in exchange, she seems awfully irritable once a month. Now, I don’t know what her exact cycle is, so you just need to pray you aren’t catching her at that time of month today.”

Once inside the tanker’s pilothouse, they used a satellite link to call up “that little thing” who was finally developing secondary sex characteristics. Once she heard what the Asian had to say, she puffed out her soft-looking cheeks.

“How could they do such a thing? This might just mean war.”

“No. No, it does not. What happened to that transfer student who advocated love and peace?”

“Anyone would give up on that after being pursued by a true monster like you Hidden Ones. Besides, I think it was what you two did that helped me mature most of all.”

The footage was unsteady, so she must have been walking around while holding a phone or tablet. She wore a fancy, shoulder-baring dress with a long skirt that spread out like an umbrella and she cheekily held the camera overhead to maintain her best angle.

“I’m acting based on careful thought here, so please don’t make a mess of my plans by wielding the long arm of a powerful nation,” said Sugiyado. “That will just mean another mess I have to clean up in secret.”

“Says the person who essentially rummaged through the armor decorating my mansion’s lobby. Still, I never thought that I would be hearing more about that incident now, even if it did create an eternal bond between us.”

“Yeah, neither did I.”

“Also, I never knew there was more to that incident we weren’t aware of. It feels like it sullies what I thought was our own lovely story. Yes, war is sounding better all the time. Maybe I should bring down that broadcast tower, the…New Yokohama Aeromonolith, was it?”

“Did I choose the wrong way to solve that problem back then!? Is this some form of delayed divine punishment!?”

He could not help but look fondly back on “that little thing” who had tugged on his clothes and called him “Nii-sama” based on some weird interpretation of Japanese culture she had picked up somewhere.

“Also, why are you so full of energy? There’s a time difference of more than 10 hours between our countries, so what are you doing up and moving around?”

“Oh, nothing. I just have somewhere I need to be, you silly fool.”

“Hm? Wait, please tell me I’m just being paranoid!”

She told him no such thing.

“I’m right heeeere☆”

Small arms hugged him from behind.

He had never expected her to make a surprise visit to the front line of the technological conflict between armored samurai and armored knights.

“I detected the repulsive odor of a dangerous conspiracy much like back then , so I decided to take a quick trip halfway around the globe with a ramjet engine. You should really praise me for being so worried for your wellbeing.”

Sugiyado Souha snapped not at the head of state but at her bodyguard knight.

“Are you insane!? Wipe that grin off your face!! Have you completely forgotten what happened in this country just a few years ago!?”

“Like I had a choice. The Kingdom is an absolute monarchy that believes in the divine right of kings. Parliament is just for show, so if the true head of the nation says to do something, then you’re playing strip rock-paper-scissors, dancing in the nude, or doing whatever else she asked of you. In this case, I had to put together and host a ninja tour for her.”

“Hey, honored guest, the queen of an entire country has risked her life to come play with you, so stop being shy,” said the queen in question. “Shouldn’t you be crumpling up your face and turning on the waterworks?”

“Oh, god. You really have changed, haven’t you!?”

“What, did you like me better the way I was? If you weren’t an honored guest, I would be pinching my skirt and stomping on you for that lack of decorum, but have it your way. I am prepared to comply with your perverted demands, Nii-sama .”

“Oh, shut up! Why don’t you realize that’s the problem right there!?”

He made the queen laugh while she intentionally peered up at him from below – which meant she was giving him a glimpse of her growing chest. When he shouted back at her to avoid some dishonorable false charges, something fell out of his pocket.

It was a long, skinny snack food wrapped like a piece of hard candy.

“Hm? What is this? …E-extra-hard Happy Churn???”

It truly was a stupendous product. He had snuck a few into his pocket when he saw an opening, but they had actually retained their beautiful oblong shape without breaking during all that intense fighting. Bravo, Happy Churn. They had not abandoned this ninja.

“Hold on, honored guest,” cut in John. “Do you have any idea how risky it was to bring unbreakable, and thus portable, Happy Churn out to sea like this!? Did you sell your soul to the devil on Dejima!? Is this really safe!? Gulp.”

“N-now, now. I am a forgiving queen, so if a commoner is offering me a gift, I would be willing to accept it to further our diplomatic and personal bonds. So hand it over. Yes, hand it over. (Glance, glance)”

“N-no, this isn’t a gift!”

Sugiyado tried to argue his case, but no one was listening.

He was saved by the disguised carrier ship’s communications technician.

The man pressed one side of the headphones to one ear as he turned back toward them. His gaze was on John instead of the little girl, so he may have decided it would be rude to speak directly to the queen without going through his superior officer first.

“We have received a report, Count. We have intercepted a radio transmission from the New Yokohama artificial island. After decrypting it, we found some information related to the honored guest.”

“Provide a summary.”

“Yes, sir.”

After speaking that word which carried a different weight when directed at a noble with a real court rank, the communications technician did as requested.

“Four ninjas who deserted from the local military have acquired some information at the New Yokohama Stock Exchange. They appear to be using that classified data to make some kind of deal with the higher ups. It is effectively blackmail.”

Sugiyado slapped a hand against his forehead.

“I warn them so much and those morons still feel the need to open that can of worms!?”

Now the Shogunate would be unable to back down even if they wanted to. They would be unable to rest until they had caught up to Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao and received their four heads on a platter.

Worse, this blackmail method meant they had ultimately failed to extract the shogunate data they had wanted from that stock exchange server. At most, they had found the proverbial lizard’s tail of that final mission. In poker terms, this was a bluff meant to apply pressure to an opponent. Yet they had placed their own lives on the scales in the process.

And it was all just so they could reclaim Sugiyado Souha’s life.

They had no proof at all that he was still alive, but they clung to the hope that he was and continued down the hopeless bloody path they had set for themselves.

“Could they be any more stupid!?”

“Don’t say that. This shows how much they care about you. Enough to trust for no reason that you would never die.” John chuckled and casually slapped Sugiyado’s shoulder. “We have been monitoring the situation ourselves. First the theft of a modular nuclear reactor, then the abduction of a dollhouse idol, and finally hacking into the mainframe of a stock exchange. Each of them was a shocking enough case to leave its mark in the annals of crime, yet they impressively harmed zero people in the process. They’re going out of their way to preserve your reputation. There were countless easier ways to go about this, but they intentionally restricted themselves and took the long way around. All to prove that you made no mistake when training them.”

“…”

He was briefly unsure how to respond to that.

He was weak, so he ultimately dodged the issue by focusing on the job at hand.

“But the Shogunate is bound to pick up on that soon. The profilers will have noticed how blatantly they’re avoiding any casualties.”

“Probably so. So do you think they’ll go for that method next time, or maybe the time after that?”

The little girl clinging to Sugiyado’s hip pouted her lips at that.

“The Shogunate, huh? I guess declaring war would be going too far, but maybe I should load John up with bombs and send him for a pleasant cruise above their capital. The pressure might be enough to slow down their reaction speed.”

“They might decide to settle their domestic issues ASAP so they can focus on the Kingdom instead. Violia, your presence is a little too powerful to use as a wakeup call. Anything you did would make predicting their next action nigh impossible, so please stay put.”

“Boo.”

“Please, Your Majesty.”

He patted her head while she clung to the side of his hip and then he spoke to the communication technician.

“Excuse me, mister. If possible, could you provide the details of the deal my idiot students are trying to work out?”

“Yes, sir, honored guest. The local military set up the details. They will meet in the B3 indoor plaza of New Yokohama Station’s Combined Underground Mall at 7:30 tonight. All further details will be discussed then.”

“That’s less than half an hour from now.”

“Plus, this is the evening rush hour. The station is sure to be flooded with businessmen headed home from work.”

That just about settled it. Just as John had suggested, the Shogunate intended to use that method. Ouka’s group would be wiped out with no hope of defending themselves. It was not an issue of skill – their un-ninja-like warmth would trip them up.

“But I doubt Guren or Suiren would choose to do that.”

“I have a report for our honored guest. The local military on New Yokohama artificial island appears to be sending out two sets of orders. It is extremely likely that they are commanding an official unit and another unit behind the scenes.”

“So they plan to leave Guren and Suiren in the dark and let them die along with Ouka’s group? All so they can end this as quickly as possible!?”

The queen tilted her head while clinging to Sugiyado’s hip.

“Um, what exactly is the problem here?”

“Ouka’s group is not willing to take innocent lives for their objective. That much is clear from their past actions,” spat out Sugiyado. Even he had killed that armored samurai to silence him and to help Shirazaya Guren and Suiren. “So the Shogunate only has to release poison gas or a biological weapon inside the station building during the evening rush hour. Even if Ouka’s group could escape on their own, they’re bound to stop and try to help the suffering people. They’ll know saving all of them is a futile task, but they’ll still draw out every last ounce of strength from their dying bodies to save as many as possible. Goddammit!!”

### 3: The Boy who Watered the Girl’s Seed

She had run out of time.

That was what had led Shizukuma Asagao to enter the ninja world.

In this age, everything was a meritocracy. If you had the knowledge and skills, you could skip ahead in school or even go straight to work, but that made things all the rougher for those who could not keep up. Simply studying the core subjects and going to college was not enough to get you anywhere. This was apparently the natural result of needing to secure a working population in an isolationist nation that refused to accept foreign laborers, but Asagao did not have a good feel for the specifics of the issue.

She had always grown bored with things quickly and never stuck with anything for long.

She had been something of a prodigy, but everyone was inundated with information these days. Even if you won an award or three, you were quickly forgotten by the general public.

And with a poor connection to her family, she had been cut off from the internal cycle as well.

Unable to accomplish anything, she had let time pass until the meritocracy’s time limit had arrived.

The public institutions required her to choose further education or a job.

Either way, she would be working for the nation’s benefit. The Shogunate officials had kicked her out of the room she had optimized for a lazy life and she had been more or less forced out into the world.

“That’s a real shame. If you had worked up your courage and spoken with your parents first, they might have been willing to help you out.”

If she had not met Sugiyado Souha then – albeit over the internet – her young mind may have been diluted and washed away by the great ocean out there.

“Well, maybe we ran into each other for a reason. I’ll teach you how to get by. Although this will be like teaching a sunflower how to survive in the shade.”

After so long without any human interaction, her tongue had grown rusty. She had found it hard to speak with anyone even through a screen. At the time, she had even had trouble judging how to approach her parents and convey her thoughts to them without introducing misunderstandings, but Sugiyado Souha had been patient with her. Even though someone on his level could easily have ended the remote interview and chosen a more talented candidate.

Why are you doing so much for me?

Her words had come out in intermittent bursts and she had been unsure if she was successfully communicating her question, but he had answered her all the same.

“No real reason. I chose you because you have your own unique charm. Well, just take your time and you’ll come to realize the world isn’t as apathetic to you as you think.”

He had allowed her a connection. He had said she had her own unique charm. It had been no more than a casual comment for him.

But it had definitely saved her.

Strangely, she had not grown bored of following him. Not all of it had been fun – if anything, he had been a strict teacher – but she had never once complained. She had shown no talent in direct combat wielding a sword or shuriken, but she had not given up after finding something she could not do for the first time in her life. She had instead asked herself what she could do and she had worked hard to hold her ground. She had learned how to dig in her heels and stick with something.

When he had given her the new name of Asagao, she had thought it did not suit her.

But he had told her to start with the name and learn to become a bright flower who could smile with anyone. She had realized it was not about if the name suited her now; it was about becoming someone who the name did suit.

Once she realized his thoughts behind that, she had come to understand something else too.

She found she was capable of grasping other people’s feeling. She no longer had trouble judging her distance from them. The rust had fallen from her tongue and lips. She could approach people the way everyone else did.

He was not as close to her as her parents, but he was not as distant as an adult.

Yes, so that small girl had started to think of him like a big brother.

“Okay.”

The bob cut girl slapped her extremely small face between the hands sticking out from her baggy sleeves to refocus herself.

“I refuse to believe that was enough to kill him.”

And she gave a smile that suited her name.

“Wait for us, Sensei. We’ll save you.”

### 4: PCB9

New Yokohama Domain had a few subway lines in addition to the major terminal station that connected to the giant bridge back to the mainland. The closer subway stations were linked to the large terminal station by underground corridors and plenty of shops had been built along those corridors. That meant the city sat above several subway stations linked on a scale and with a complexity beyond the norm. Some likened it to a house of tricks and it was a hotbed for rumors, like that it hid a secret nuclear shelter or a pure water pool for particle observation.

But there was one thing the people were unaware of.

The entire vast underground mall shared an air conditioning system, so infecting just one duct could quickly make the entire facility deadly. The civilians innocently believed they were being protected, so they never would have imagined the Shogunate might expose them to a biological weapon along with a rebellious criminal.

“!!”

After returning to New Yokohama Domain, Sugiyado Souha hid his mouth behind the largish scarf that helped block facial recognition before he ran through the city night and descended into one of the giant underground mall’s more than 30 entrances.

His earphone produced the concerned voice of John, an outsider. He was virtually sharing the boy’s eyes using his phone’s camera.

“H-hey, are you sure you don’t need any backup!? We’re talking about 200,000 people taken hostage! The queen has given me permission to join the fight, so wouldn’t it be best if you had some help?”

“Were you planning to charge into a crowded subway station during rush hour while wearing that huge thing? The Shogunate is hell bent on killing Ouka’s group to hide their secret. They’re willing to kill 200,000 innocent people and their own colleagues like Guren and Suiren to do it!”

“Don’t you have a bad feeling about this? It reminds me too much of what happened back then. I can’t get a read on anything and I can’t predict anything!”

“I’m saying they might flip the switch the instant they see someone as conspicuous as you there. So just sit tight and keep an eye on things from out there!!”

“I get it, goddammit! But don’t forget that you’re not alone. We’re on your side!!”

He did not respond to that one.

Because he was afraid trying to speak would let out a breath matching the shape of the smile on his lips.

That final mission had been hell, but maybe he had gained something from it.

(Now, then.)

The giant underground mall was like one big box, making it perfect for converting into a gas chamber. Since the air conditioning system was shared, infecting one duct would kill everyone there.

But it was not all bad. Risks and negatives were all in how you viewed them.

And ninjas lived in a different world from samurai and knights. More often than not, they were given infiltration and disturbance jobs while at a disadvantage. If your side had the upper hand to begin with, no one would turn to those who lurked in the shadows in the first place.

(This tells me the villain will only be after a single location. That means I won’t have to run all over this labyrinthine station disarming countless devices!)

“By the way, do you have any guesses what they will be using?” asked the queen over his earphone.

“PCB9. A toxic substance related to vision and the liver had its components pharmaceutically enhanced to create a colorless but strong-smelling poison gas weapon. The Shogunate officially stores 0mg of it, but they abuse a loophole in the various treaties by maintaining a lab that can manufacture it at any time. The actual ingredients are as common as can be and thus very cheap, so there is no concern of anyone detecting anything when they begin producing some. It has a death rate of about 55.8%. Once it gets inside an organism and accumulates, there is no hope of saving them but they will not die right away. Their liver function will drop over the course of a month and they can only lie around suffering until they finally breathe their last.”

It might sound like the other half would survive, but that was only technically true. Even if you were lucky enough to survive, you would face a life of hellish after effects. You would be bedridden forevermore and – to make matters worse – no one would suspect a thing if someone injected you with something in the hospital and your condition took a turn for the worse.

“I-I didn’t really expect you to have an answer. What makes you think they are using that?”

“First, I compared the candidates to the temperature, humidity, level of dust and other impurities in the air, expected distribution range, and other conditions of this particular attack. There were other poison gasses and biological weapons that fit the conditions, but like I said before, those would all be detected by foreign agencies while the Shogunate prepared them. There is no chance the Tuxedos of a #1 enemy state like the Kingdom would overlook it. Plus, PCB9 gives them an advantage when it comes to controlling the spread of the damage. There is no way to actually eliminate it, but since it accumulates in the fat, you can place animal fat along the borderline and have it soak up the toxin like a deodorizer. Without a safety measure like that, they would never use a chemical weapon in the middle of a city of a million, even if it’s separated from the mainland by the sea.”

“You make this all sound so simple, but that means you have the specs for hundreds or even thousands of poison gasses and viruses memorized, doesn’t it? You scare me sometimes.”

John kept a somewhat exasperated tone, but Sugiyado had to focus on his job right now.

There was only one possible target.

(The underground mall’s central heating.)

In order to cut down on energy usage, the underground mall did not install an air conditioner in each individual room. Instead, it used a single giant unit that sent air to the rest of the facility through ducts. Air was taken in through the many intake vents on the surface and it all passed through central heating before separating back out to the rest of the facility.

It was similar to the neck of an hourglass. If that one point was contaminated, everything else would be wiped out.

The central heating room’s location was not revealed to the public. Needless to say, that was because the normal visitors did not need to go there.

(But you can make a pretty good guess based on the layout and density of the ducts on the ceiling.)

“Oops.”

Just before running up some stairs, he came to a stop and faced a nearby drink vending machine.

Up ahead in the crowd, he had seen a pair of blonde twins in white dresses with red and white hair extensions swaying as they walked. Shirazaya Guren held a hand to her throat and Suiren toyed with her right ear. They appeared to be on their way to make a deal with Kuhou Ouka’s group. Sugiyado was officially missing in action, so running into them would cause problems he did not have time to deal with.

“Can’t you hide better than that?” asked Queen Violia who was artificially sharing his eyes using his phone. “Wouldn’t you be safer behind one of those columns?”

“That would make me more conspicuous. The crowd is the greatest form of cover, so as long as I don’t do anything suspicious, I can just go with the flow.”

Based on the duct layout, he was less than 50m from the central heating. He could already see the metal door labeled staff only that had a keypad next to the knob.

At times like this, he could not use smart cards that left a purchase record, but outdated methods had their advantages. He pulled his wallet from the pocket of his loose pants, inserted a few coins, and pushed the button for a soda while continuing his observations.

“They are pros too, aren’t they?” asked the queen. “Are you sure they will overlook you?”

“If you give up and turn around when the gap between buildings is too far to jump, you aren’t cut out to be a ninja. A pro will bring a rope or ladder with them to cross it.”

He crouched down and retrieved the can from the machine, but instead of standing back up, he gently rolled the unopened can below the machine. Finally, he nonchalantly stood back up and started following the flow of foot traffic.

“Nii-sama, they’re going to find you!”

“No, they aren’t.”

Vending machines used a lot of electricity since they had to keep so many products either heated or cooled. The large fan used to rid the machine of its heat would produce a fair amount of heat itself, so it was generally placed where no one would see it but also in an outwards-facing position where the air could cool it.

Also, canned drinks – especially carbonated ones – would explode when overheated.

So what would happen if an unopened can was lodged up against the motor attached below the vending machine to turn the fan?

He heard a muffled and wet boom.

“?”

“Over there.”

He only had to get both sisters to look in a certain direction. Similar to pressing against the opposite side of a revolving door, he slipped past the twins in military-looking white dresses while staying only a few meters behind them.

This was an underground mall full of people, not a strictly-guarded fortress. There might be trouble here, but it would not raise the alert level unless it could be proven to be related to their job. There was more to being a ninja than wielding swords and shurikens in stealthy battles.

There was now no one between him and the staff-only door to the central heating.

In his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, he casually held a hand to his earphone.

“At close range, they might detect my transmissions. You won’t hear anything from me once I go inside, but don’t panic.”

“Got it. We will be using a different route to monitor things.”

(This is NR East, so all the extra locks are done by Saitou Security. This model looks like a 34-B, so I need a direct link to the red and yellow.)

There might as well not have been a lock. Anyone who encountered a keypad and tried to search out the correct series of digits was not cut out to be a ninja. He pulled a Fierce Fang from his back, stuck the tip in the gap between the keypad and the door, used leverage to break it open, connected the internal wires to his phone, and forced open the electronic lock. It only took him three seconds, so it did not even look like he was standing there working on something.

“…”

He cracked open the door and slipped inside. The room beyond was dark and full of traps. Not even he could directly see IR lasers, but he could see the stamp-sized mirrors attached all over.

Several pieces of machinery were surrounded by metal fences and thick pipes connected them together. The central heating maintenance hallway was like a spider web woven of unseen light. Touching even one strand would inform the villain of his presence. That might even lead them to hasten their timetable and use the PCB9 poison gas weapon right away.

But on the other hand, the lasers controlled by those mirrors could only travel in straight lines. If he read the angles of the mirrors, he could tell which way the lasers were being reflected.

“Sh.”

He let out a light breath and performed an acrobatic flip. His largish scarf fluttered after him as he sometimes jumped and sometimes rolled to dance nimbly through the invisible spider web without making a noise.

(Setting it up to distribute the gas wouldn’t take long, so a trap of this scale suggests they were ordered to wait here until receiving the go-ahead.)

Once inside, he sensed a presence.

In his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, Sugiyado pressed up against a piece of metal larger than a small truck and viewed the scene further in. He already held a Fierce Fang in his hand.

“…”

There was indeed someone there.

That someone was curled up with their back to him and they wore a hooded coat. They were small, but he could not tell if they were a boy or a girl.

The rectangular maintenance hatch for the central heating was located nearly at the floor on the wall and the screws in the four corners had been removed to pop off the cover. A metal cylinder the size of a 2L drink bottle stuck out of the attaché case next to the hatch. It did not have any obvious labels, but that had to be it. Once the valve was opened either based on a timer or a remote signal, the PCB9 would enter the duct and spread throughout the entire underground mall. That would infect the 200,000 ordinary people using the multiple subway stations, the twin sisters Guren and Suiren, as well as Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

He had no detailed information about the dissemination container.

If it was triggered with the movement of a fingertip or of the eyes, then throwing a single Fierce Fang would be a risky gamble. How could he safely eliminate this enemy? How could he switch off their life without letting them scream or even dilate their pupils? His ability to rationally analyze this showed that, as much as he cared for those on his side, he could never work as a guardian of the law or ally of the people who worked out in the open. And that was fine with him. He remained behind cover and wracked his brain, but then he heard a familiar voice.

It came from the radio sitting next to the enemy.

He realized the building layout showed the meetup point for the deal being directly below this central heating room. PCB9 was colorless but had a distinctive odor, so it was not difficult for people to realize something was wrong. Had this enemy set up a bug or camera so they could wait until the four kunoichis were too deep in to escape once the attack was triggered?

He doubted this was simply insurance in case Guren and Suiren lost. There was no hesitation or concern in the posture of that figure with their back turned. They clearly intended to use this no matter what.

He focused on the voices coming from the radio.

They most likely belonged to Kuhou Ouka and Shirazaya Guren.

Or maybe it was Suiren.

“The Shogunate’s dogs actually bothered to show up to talk it out? They must really not want the data on that storage to get out.”

“Sigh. He sounded so confident, so why does none of this have anything to do with the mint’s printing press? And let’s not get carried away. The higher ups told us what is going on here. Given the encryption method used, it would take 30 years to crack even using all the country’s supercomputers connected in parallel over high-speed lines. Maybe you did fish up a sunken ship, but you did not know how to unlock the treasure chest within. So you decided to threaten us to learn what was inside. Isn’t that right?”

“If you were that confidant we couldn’t get in, you wouldn’t have responded to our request for negotiations. The Shogunate is scared. Maybe all this country’s supercomputers can’t crack it open, but what if we took it to another country? What if we handed this over to the Kingdom waiting out at sea and in the air? Whatever their overall technology level, they should have an overwhelming lead when it comes to population and manpower. And thus the total number of computers they can use in parallel.”

“If you had any such connections, you would not have made this kind of demand in the first place.”

“Oh, really? But if we need connections, we can always make new ones. Remember, kunoichis like us excel at both combat and manipulating people.”

Sugiyado silently graded that a 60. Inspiring emotions in someone was indeed a ninja technique, but to do that, Ouka would first have to know what emotions she needed to draw out in order to succeed.

If she was only making her opponent angry because they could not perform at their best after losing their cool, then she was still unsure what she wanted to do here. Doing that could give your opponent the opening they needed to manipulate you instead.

“Hee hee.”

“Is something funny?”

“Oh, just that you don’t seem to have heard anything at all. I imagine it was Sugiyado Souha who taught you to act like that. If so, he might just be charged with criminal instigation, or maybe even as the mastermind behind it all.”

“He was retried and you’re the ones that dragged him back into it all!!”

If he were not so close to the enemy, he might have clicked his tongue. In a single move, the twin had turned everything around quite impressively. She must have known about Ouka’s psychological weak point from the beginning.

“He told us you were after the mint’s printing press, but this changes everything. Sugiyado Souha’s students were acting on his behalf to restore his honor. If we view this as an act of the Sugiyado Ninja School, there isn’t much room to defend him, is there?”

“You couldn’t even protect him.”

“?”

“You used him for your own purposes and then abandoned him to that tragedy on the rooftop! Listen, if anything did happen to him, I swear I’ll use that modular nuclear reactor to blow up the Tenshukaku, the very center of the Shogunate!!”

“Oh, you seem awfully shaken for someone making such a bold threat. You fear he could never have survived that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I get it all right. I get that leaving our precious teacher with coldhearted monsters like you will only get him used like a tool and then thrown out. And I get that you could never understand how we feel!!”

“What did you just say?”

The tides were turning.

Don’t get all heated up when you’re the host, thought Sugiyado with a cringe at the twin’s reaction.

“We used him like a tool and threw him out? We did nothing of the sort!! We have a duty to treat our cooperators right. Once we take them onto our team, we treat them like family and we rely on each other! So we could see just how much pressure your actions were placing on his shoulders. Yet he still never made a single complaint. He carried it all himself, wearing himself down in the process. All because you felt the need to cause trouble!!”

“Enough. Bara, Hoozuki, prepare for battle. Asagao, you provide support. We’ll kick their asses and swipe the answer from their pocket!”

“Now we’re talking. It seems neither of us actually suspect he is dead, so we must arrest you and reclaim the life he had. Suiren!!”

But he could not bring himself to outright reject what they were saying.

On one side, Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

On the other, Shirazaya Guren and Suiren.

They were willing to speak from the heart when it came to him and even grab their weapons despite knowing that was not the smartest move. He reflected deeply on the fact that he was blessed with so many people like that.

How could he let them die here?

He no longer cared about reclaiming his honor. He had no desire he was willing to trample someone else to fulfill. But this was different. He swore to himself he would protect these girls who were standing up and crossing blades for him.

The villain had heard all of this as well, and they held a hand to their ear while still curled up. They were probably contacting someone with their earphone. They must have received some kind of sign because their back shook a bit, as if in laughter.

“Heh.”

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha threw three Fierce Fang air-pressure kunais toward that back.

One toward the back of the head, one toward the spine, and one toward the heart.

All three targets showed no mercy. No matter how dangerous this person in the hooded coat was, this was guaranteed to pierce their vitals. The power of nitrogen would produce 15 tons of pressure to shred whatever the kunais had embedded themselves in.

He revealed his skill in the modern ninja techniques known as Strategic Martial Arts, which had been developed to fight the foreign elites arriving by air and by sea.

Or it looked like he had.

The coat should have been reduced to shreds, yet it flew intact through the air. And the supposedly slain target was not bleeding at all. The scar on Sugiyado’s nose bent.

(A substitution!?)

The torn coat remained upright and seemingly filled with a body, so it was likely made with shape memory alloy, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, or electric potential elastic fibers.

To fool an extraordinary Hidden One so fully meant this had to be at least a High Ninja, if not even higher than that.

He heard a footstep from overhead.

They were dropping rapidly toward him.

But his immediate reaction was not toward the attacker from above. It was toward the central heating machinery surrounding him.

If the PCB9 container was unsealed and the gas entered the ducts through the opened maintenance hatch, 200,000 people would be infected. And his students and the twins were part of that number.

So he did not need to think twice.

“!!”

He spun around in a breath.

He threw more than five Fierce Fangs in all directions and used the nitrogen to critically spread apart and destroy the wiring, circuit boards, and other Achilles’ heels of the facility. Bright sparks erupted all over and the machinery fell silent.

But he did not have time to observe his handiwork.

He had neglected the assassin directly above him and it was too late to react now. He rolled blindly to the side, but he still felt scorching pain across his back. Something had cut him through his short-sleeved dress shirt. The wound was shallow, but undeniable.

Blood dripped to the floor.

He grimaced at that fact more than the pain. Just like with the air-pressure kunais he had thrown, he had to update his mental list of evidence he would have to erase.

At the same time, he heard a noise similar to compressed air bursting out. He saw the sides of the large metal cylinder peel away to reveal small holes in something like a polka dot pattern.

Something colorless floated out like sugar being stirred into water, but it showed no sign of being absorbed into the boxy duct. He had just barely stopped the central heating in time.

“Not bad.”

That quick comment came from someone standing about 5m ahead of him. They wore a black leather suit and an octopus-like gasmask that covered their face. Their gender was still a mystery. The long brown hair and curvy figure made him think girl, but in this world, he could not deny the possibility of them having padding within the leather suit.

That meant he had no idea who this was.

He did not recognize them and nothing looked familiar.

But that did not speak poorly of their skills. In fact, being unknown was a status symbol in the ninja world. The “legendary ninjas” like Hattori or Kirigakure, who were famous enough to be answers on TV quiz shows, were usually ninjas who had lost their ability to fight and had the Shogunate sell off their personal information. Meanwhile, the unknown ninjas were the ones the Shogunate wanted to keep hidden. It may have been similar to the difference between Elite Ninjas like Ouka’s group who stood at the top of the ranking but whose total numbers were known and the Hidden Ones like Sugiyado Souha whose numbers were a mystery.

Did that mean this was another Hidden One?

Or was there some other exceptional category other than that?

Either way, they were top rate.

And this was the hellish front line where the extraordinary could be found anywhere. This was not a training facility where the difficulty was adjusted to an amateur’s level. Whoever this was, he had to fight them now that they had encountered each other.

“But are you sure that was a good idea? All you did was transfer the PCB9 from a big box to a smaller one. There’s no hope for you without a mask like this one. Was this really worth getting sliced up by my Piercing Web?”

“That is for me to decide,” spat out Sugiyado while pulling another Fierce Fang from the back of his torn and red-stained shirt.

This would soon be a world carrying a silent 55.8% chance of death. He would be fighting a deadly battle while also sharing a room with an invisible grim reaper.

### 5: A Battle Outside the Ranking System

To be entirely clear, the faceless ninja’s goal was not to drive back Sugiyado Souha and escape safely.

He or she needed to eliminate Kuhou Ouka and the other three on the floor below. Even if that meant putting Shirazaya Guren, Suiren, and 200,000 ordinary people in harm’s way.

So…

(I stopped the central heating, but largescale infrastructure like this is bound to have backup power. At this rate, it will turn back on and ruin everything!!)

That was the focal point of this battle.

They had to run around the large but labyrinthine central heating room while one tried to turn the power back on and the other tried to take out the backup power as well. Whoever achieved their goal first would win.

“Heh heh.”

A muffled laugh left the gasmask.

Something crawled behind them.

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha ducked his head while running. Something sliced by directly overhead and a straight diagonal line of sparks flew along the thick metal machinery next to him.

(A wire?)

His instincts told him that.

This was someone skilled enough to pull off a substitution technique by filling their coat with shape memory alloy, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, or electric potential elastic fibers.

But his knowledge rejected that idea.

The gasmask ninja was being too careless about their own route for this place to be laid out with taut wires. Running the way they were would have gotten them tangled up in no time.

Then what was this trap strung up across the room? Steel wires too thin to see with the naked eye would be the most obvious solution, yet all he saw were…

Light and mirrors.

In other words…

“Is your Piercing Web made from laser scalpels and ultra-fine heat-resistant optical fiber!?”

As soon as he figured it out, the storm of invisible blades rushed toward him from all directions.

Several laser emitters extended from their back like octopus or squid tentacles to aim freely in any direction around them. And if these were little more than ordinary laser scalpels, they could be reflected like normal with high luminance mirrors. Yet these were still surgical tools. If they targeted the thick blood vessels in the limbs or neck, they could slice through them as easily as a normal blade, leading to heavy blood loss.

(No, I bet this was originally anti-electronic warfare equipment that overheated the ninja outfits that protect their wearer using their spider silk structure and computer-controlled adjustments.)

Cutting-edge ninja outfits could shrug off exposure to some flames, but if the heat was focused on a single point, it might be enough to destroy the computer chips.

Sugiyado could not see the IR beams.

And even if he could, his body could not keep up with a weapon that approached at the speed of light.

Unlike a normal wire, these could be switched on and off, so this enemy could move around freely without having to worry about being caught in their own trap.

That left Sugiyado with only his knowledge as the key to this fight.

He would have to read the position and angles of the laser emitters and the mirrors to predict the reflected path of the Piercing Web and dodge based on that.

“You’re pretty good!”

He did not need to respond to that praise. The two of them continued running while he threw a Fierce Fang.

Sparks immediately flew.

A laser sweeping through the air had hit the polished side of the air-pressure kunai and it had been reflected wildly. The gasmask ninja had not seen this coming, so they shrank down a bit.

It had taken more than the sparkle of the blade to do that.

The nitrogen gas used to open the kunai had locally altered the composition of the air and distorted the transmittance.

“Tch!!”

Meanwhile, Sugiyado threw a few Fierce Fangs in directions other than the gasmask ninja and used the nitrogen’s 15 tons of force to sever the wiring for the central heating’s backup power. He had remained focused on his objective. He had worked to stop the PCB9 more than ensure his own safety.

“You did that in your spare time!?”

“By the way,” he cut in. “The central heating is a very large piece of infrastructure used to manage the temperature of the entire giant underground mall. How exactly do you think it manages that?”

He changed direction and threw an air-pressure kunai to the side, still ignoring the gasmask ninja whose tentacle-like weapons were moving behind their back.

And he gave his answer.

“By consuming a hell of a lot of fuel.”

A mass of metal to his side suddenly swelled out and exploded, sending jagged metal and flames toward the gasmask ninja.

The damage to all the equipment and pipes must have allowed the central heating’s fuel to leak out.

“Aaaagh!?”

The gasmask ninja was blasted to the metal fence on the other side of the room, but Sugiyado was not going to let them escape now. He grabbed a new Fierce Fang in each hand and used the dark smoke to rush toward his target unseen.

He jabbed the tip of one Fierce Fang below their chin and pulled up to pry the gasmask from their face.

Based on his first impression of their face, this appeared to be a beautiful boy. So was the figure showing through the leather suit faked using padding?

“!?”

The assassin’s entire body visibly tensed. After all, this area was infected with his own poison gas. Even a faceless ninja would feel their throat go dry with fear.

Sugiyado hoped this would be enough to stop him.

But when he instead saw one of the tentacles moving behind the boy, he immediately stabbed his two air-pressure kunais into the side and chest of the leather suit.

“Obh!? Ugweehhhhh!!”

“Quit exaggerating. If that’s government issue, it’s spider silk and can stop a rifle bullet. But if you insist, I can open it up with my kunai’s nitrogen. Open your body up, that is. I’m honestly having trouble figuring out why I shouldn’t.”

Of course, even if the bullet could not pierce the suit, it could not fully absorb the shock and that would hit the body within.

Perhaps it was like pressing a flat-ended ruler against your stomach and trying to place your full weight on it.

“Kah, cough, cough!!”

Unable to bear it, the ninja slid down onto his butt while still leaning back against the fence.

“Th-there’s something wrong with you. This is PCB9. At your level, you must know what it can do! Breath it in and your liver stops functioning. Except it takes a full month while you watch all your skin turn yellow! How is this not freaking you the hell out!?”

“If panicking could change the reality around you, I would become a shaman who can enter trances at will.” Sugiyado sighed. “PCB9 generally enters through the mouth and gathers in your fat before the negative effects spread to your eyes and liver. So as long as you do something about the breathing part, you can survive. Just like you tried to protect yourself with that gasmask.”

“Yeah, but you destroyed-” The assassin stopped midsentence. “Hold on. You’re kidding, right?”

“I will only explain this once, so if you want to live, work your brain cells overtime to learn how to breathe. Got that?”

“What’s your price? I know you’re not going to save an enemy for nothing in return! Tell me!!”

“You will be telling me everything you know about the backup plan in case this one fails. Now, if you want to die that badly, you can pay me up front, but are you sure you want to delay this any longer?”

## Chapter 5

### 1: A Flower Garden in the Depths of Hell

Perhaps it was fortunate that PCB9 was a poison gas and not a biological weapon that could self-replicate from a small leak, expanding the infected area indefinitely.

Sugiyado wiped up his blood and retrieved his kunais. The gas could escape when he opened the door, so he would have to go to the effort of setting up a dual-layer barrier with plastic tarps, but it was not enough to trap him in this room.

After retrieving the empty container that had holes in its side, he ground to a halt like jammed gears.

“Kh.”

(With my clothes, my gear, and the empty gas container, I’m just past my first limit. It’s probably about 6.5kg.)

At 5kg, his back felt weird. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He could not forget that passing the next limit would mean dropping his weapons and writhing in pain regardless of his surroundings.

(But I’m not there yet!)

“H-hey,” said the former gasmask ninja with a stiff smile. “What am I supposed to do?”

“If you don’t want to throw away the life I saved, then bind your arms and legs with these zip ties and stuff yourself in a coin locker. You should fit in the large lockers for suitcases if you fold up your limbs.”

“Are you insa-…um, I mean, I’ll see what I can do. Y-you’d better come get me soon, okay?”

After giving Sugiyado a look, the boy completed the necessary work, so Sugiyado locked the locker, removed the key, and placed a hand on his earphone with blood soaking the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

“John, no more need for radio silence from me. Can you hear this?”

“Took you long enough! So how’d it go!? There was apparently an explosion and the customers are flooding out!!”

“I stopped the central heating itself, but the room was contaminated. The seal is holding, but this is still a battlefield. Something could break the airtight seal at any time. John, do what you can to keep people away from this area. I’m counting on you!!”

“Any other requests?”

“I set up a cleaning sign in front of the door, but an overzealous employee still might take a peek inside. The Kingdom has some people on this island, right? Can you get any of them to secretly decontaminate the place? They’ll have to get there fast to beat the brave police or firefighters there.”

“I know you wouldn’t ask a favor of me unless you really needed it, so don’t worry about a thing. I’ll get it done.”

“I also secured the empty container wrapped in plastic. I doubt it will matter, but it’s still evidence. The Shogunate is behind this, so handing it over to them would only get it destroyed. I’ll hand it over to you along with the culprit I captured, okay?”

“Fine, but you’re talking about someone who attempted mass murder against their own people. You’re handing us one hell of a good diplomatic bargaining chip. It’s like a joker you can use over and over.”

“Anything’s fine with me as long as we can take out the idiot at the very top who approved this. Do whatever it takes to apply pressure on that bureaucratic advisor. And keep it up until it seems better to abandon that explosive official than to cover this up for them.”

“I see. But there’s more to this than simple harassment, isn’t there?”

“This will never end unless it’s stopped at the source, but I’m only one person. I can’t reach the true source myself. …But if they fall from power and are booted from the national system, I can pay them a visit in the wild darkness.”

“Heh. Ha ha. Doesn’t that count as inciting a foreign threat? So even if you take the head of your direct superior, you can still find a way around it, huh? You really are a ninja!”

“We’re not like knights. And don’t forget to check over the scene before decontaminating it. …I’ll be going now. I need to get to the heart of this issue soon.”

“So you’re joining that youthful catfight, huh? Reminds me of my teenage years.”

“I’m hanging up.”

Unfortunately, the battle was not yet over. His students and the twins had continued their deadly battle while he was stopping the spread of the poison gas and he could not allow any of them to receive a fatal wound. And with the other customers and the employees evacuating after the explosion, those girls no longer had to worry about having any eyes on them. Things were bound to be bad there.

He silently descended the stairs to reach the B3 plaza where the deal was to have taken place.

That large space could be used for public events. It looked large enough for a basketball game. The ceiling was tall and supported by evenly-spaced rectangular pillars. A bronze statue of a naked woman stood near the center, but the statue and its pedestal must have been movable to clear room for events.

And now.

That entire space had devolved into chaos.

Explosive flames and a flurry of steel poured down. This was now a battlefield too intense to seem real.

### 2: Chance Meeting

––On one side were his students Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

The ninja outfits they all wore were designed to be practical while also supplying an alluring sex appeal.

The most conspicuous of them was their direct fighter Ouka, who wore a bodysuit that showed off her undeveloped figure, a white sleeveless kimono top, a long front and back skirt, and a red rope that hung down from the back of her hips like a cat tail.

That twintail kunoichi twirled around Midnight Tempest, a vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun with a bayonet and a binoculars-like multipurpose site attached. The blade-shaped gadget erupted with fire like a flamethrower and that fury took the form of a tornado around her.

No, that was more than just fire. She sometimes used explosive flames of more than 2000 degrees and sometimes used liquid nitrogen of less than -195 degrees to create a double tornado around her.

Still, the light filling the entire plaza was unnaturally intense.

That was thanks to the secret efforts of Bara, the redhaired ringlet curls girl who specialized in disguises and camouflage. She wore a body suit plus an oiran-style kimono top that exposed her shoulders and cleavage, and used the hanging sash in place of a front skirt, but that ninja outfit danced in the air as she moved now. She was probably scattering lead or zinc powder from her hair tubes. She called that weapon Pressurized Light. Metal powder with a low melting point was scattered around and the residual heat of the flames would paint it across the floors and pillars like a mirror. From there, the mirrors would control the light much like the board reflectors in a photo studio.

Based on that, it was clear that the bright and conspicuous flames were no more than a smokescreen.

From a step behind, Nantou Hoozuki, a girl with a silver ponytail and with an open-back one-piece swimsuit and baggy pants, broke through the wall of fire, arched her lithe back, strained the belts binding her body, and moved her shoulder blades to launch large shurikens at a rate of more than 3000 a minute using the pitching machine she had created by transforming her off-road motorcycle named Countless Calamities. Her combination cross shurikens could fold up like a pair of scissors, so they functioned like a cross shuriken when open and like a stick shuriken when closed.

Seeing through to that attack was very impressive.

But the true grim reaper’s scythe was sneaking up on the twin sisters from an unseen and unheard location.

Sugiyado Souha’s focus landed not on the direct fighter, but on the small bob-cut girl wearing a bleached white military uniform with a short tight skirt.

(Asagao’s their commander. She does love hiding her claws and feigning powerlessness.)

Kuhou Ouka was moving her lithe and growing body like a rhythmic gymnast or a figure skater to alternately use hellfire of more than 2000 degrees or liquid nitrogen of less than -200 degrees. The intense temperature difference created a drastic fluctuation in atmospheric pressure, which would likely help create a vacuum blade.

But that was not its purpose.

The final weapon was an impurity. It was really only specks of nitrogen oxide that would generally be called soot, but by placing it in that artificially heated wind and rapidly accelerating it, it could take out people’s senses in a different way from a vacuum blade. Anyone would notice the instant their eyes were taken out, but what about their ears or nose? If their effectiveness was reduced without your knowledge, it could cause a fatal delay in how long it took you to notice the next attack coming.

(I doubt even Ouka can see the minute impurities she’s wielding. Asagao must be monitoring the airflow while separated from the direct fighting, so she can move her limbs or clothing around to fan the nitrogen oxide in. Impressive teamwork.)

––On the other side were Shirazaya Guren and Suiren. Those kunoichi twins let their beautiful blonde hair flutter behind them along with their pure white sleeveless kimono tops and pleated miniskirts.

Chain links could be heard scraping together.

“Randomize the Steel Rope’s path.”

“Understood, Guren.”

The identical girls wielded ninja swords, kusarigamas, and stick shurikens. With ABS and polycarbonate, there were plenty of nonmetal materials that could withstand use in combat, but they had a good reason for using well-tempered steel for every last weapon.

They bent.

They curved.

(Steel Rope. Are they using magnetism? No, is it the Lorentz force!?)

They were likely scattering microscopic iron sand to give electricity a path through. While the twin sisters danced in perfect unison, they only had to throw out the kusarigamas or stick shurikens and they would fly along impossible paths, sometimes even turning at acute angles. Their straight, noncurved ninja swords also raged about with an accuracy that ignored the girls’ skeletal structures, muscular strength, and centers of gravity. The blades seemed to move with a mind of their own to guide their wielders to victory.

Sparks flew.

The combination cross shurikens were 5 or 6 times the weight of an anti-materiel bullet and should have been impossible to dodge under normal circumstances, but the twins repeatedly knocked them from the air, creating blossoms of sparks. Shizukuma Asagao was sending in nitrogen oxide as a sense-numbing grim reaper’s scythe, but even that was blown away all at once by the wind produced when a kusarigama roared around like a tornado.

Sometimes it was from the sides, sometimes it was from the front and back, and sometimes it was from above and below.

Shirazaya Guren and Suiren used their steel weapons to surround and isolate one of the four and either tore into them or made repeated minute movements to aim for the best timing.

Both sides were extremely skilled.

They had beautifully mastered the Strategic Martial Arts of the modern ninja. If they used that power for good, how many people’s smiles could they protect? Just as the design of a nation’s weapons was linked to its dignity, these state-commanded kunoichis perfectly combined practical skill and aesthetic beauty as they danced in combat.

Which was why it would be such a shame if any of them were needlessly lost here.

He could not let that happen.

And beyond that direct battle, he also had to consider the contaminated central heating room directly above this B3 plaza. The Shogunate had left behind deadly claw marks in their desperate attempt to end all this by any means necessary. If this ninja fighting grew too intense and the ceiling collapsed, the sealed PCB9 poison gas weapon would be a threat once more.

“I won’t let anyone trample on Sensei’s honor. I will reclaim him from you Shogunate dogs!!”

“Why don’t you understand that selfish decision will only destroy his current career as an instructor!?”

“Don’t you dare suggest that!”

“Don’t make me laugh, little girl. Did you really think you were the ones working in Sugiyado Souha’s best interest!?”

Even now.

Even after all this.

None of them were bad people. His students had done all this to learn the truth and the enforcers of justice had only tried to protect him by stopping it all.

He felt thankful.

He was so very, very thankful, but he still felt like it was not enough thanks.

The next move was bound to take a life on one side or the other, so now was the time.

He had to protect them, even if it put his life at risk. It did not matter what it broke within him. It was the same as that final mission, so he did not care if people thought he had not learned a thing since then.

No matter who he had to fool, he could not forget what truly mattered.

Simply put, he had to save every last person on both sides!!

In a split second, a ninja who had lost his wings soared down the stairs and onto the front line.

“What!? Sensei!?”

“Sugiyado-san!!”

In one hand, he held a Fierce Fang air-pressure kunai. In the other, a thick gas container. He forcibly moved between them and caught the bayonet and kusarigama blades that should have crossed in their pursuit of each other’s vitals.

A hand each was not enough.

If he tried to compete with them directly, he would be overpowered. He knew the limit on his spine was an illusion created by his brain, but he could not shake free of those self-imposed bonds.

“Kh, ohhhhhh!!”

So he deflected them instead. He spun like a whirlwind and had the two blade-wielding girls pass each other by like they were pressed against opposite sides of a revolving door.

That was the most he could manage.

After stopping that one exchange of deadly slashes, his momentum got the better of him and he slammed back-first into a nearby column. The impact knocked the breath out of him and he slid down to the floor while turning his eyes toward the girls.

First, Kuhou Ouka.

Good. She had no obvious injuries. The fact that her eyes widened on a pale face was worrying, but contradictorily, he was also glad to see she had not changed.

Next, Hanasawa Bara.

He was relieved by what he saw there too. Her mind must have been spinning with questions of how it had come to this and where they had gone wrong. Even though he had told her time and again to quit that since those questions did not help her do better next time.

Then, Nantou Hoozuki.

She was fine too. Only she thought of herself as expressionless because the light wavering in her eyes was highly expressive of her emotions. He wanted to tell her she did not need to feel so shaken right now.

Finally, Shizukuma Asagao.

Good. She was fine too. As much as she liked to play the knowledgeable strategist, she was still the smallest girl and could not actually fight. He had been worried a stray bullet might have found her, but she appeared unharmed.

And.

From the twins, Shirazaya Guren.

He was relieved to see she was uninjured. He had been in charge of those girls, so she could have blamed him for their actions. But she had instead seen him as a companion working on the case together and she had even grown furious on his behalf. Even though she had to be living in much worse conditions than him.

And the second twin, Shirazaya Suiren.

She was fine. She should not have had any real reason to support someone she had just met the other day. She should have prioritized her own conditions, but next thing he knew, here she was. He was actually worried that this side of her personality would lead to her taking on more of a burden than she should. That would be nothing but a negative influence on her life, yet she was almost certainly proud of what she was doing.

“…”

He had trouble breathing and felt close to passing out.

There was not much he could say right away, but if he said nothing at all, they would likely resume their meaningless fight to the death.

So he leaned his bloody back against the column, held the poison gas canister close, and gasped for breath while forcing out what mattered most.

“Stop this! Keep this up and you’ll die!!”

Both sides briefly came to a stop.

No, for a brief moment, Kuhou Ouka and Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s killer intent was diverted elsewhere.

“Who do you think we’re doing this for in the first place!? And whose side are you on anyway!!!???”

Ugh, thought Sugiyado Souha.

How did I find myself in this mess?

That was obvious enough.

They were all endlessly kind people, so this was the natural result when they set foot into the world of ninjas.

He knew that.

He understood it.

He just about laughed, so he tensed his face and worked to maintain his consciousness that had nearly been shredded by pain.

This was not over yet.

Now was not the time.

He did not care how many bolts he had in his spine or what he had in his legs to replace his torn ligaments. At 5kg, his spine felt odd. At 10kg, he could no longer fight. But so what? Now was not the time for him to collapse. He could not let it end here. He had to hold onto his consciousness and recall everything that had been built up thus far. All so he could protect those foolish but kind girls.

“Ouka.”

“Y-yes!?”

“Guren and Suiren too.”

“What…do you want?”

Both sides turned toward him when he spoke in a scratchy voice. They almost looked like classmates in the same classroom in this moment.

And he vaguely felt like that might not be a bad future for them.

Which was all the more reason to keep his words ice cold now.

“Put your weapons away, you utter morons. There is no reason for you to throw your lives away over something so stupid.”

The girls’ powerful emotions started to shrivel at his scolding words, but then he distinctly sensed them flare back up. They readied their weapons, creating a series of quiet metallic tones. But he had planned for this. He had known no one who made it this far would be broken by a single statement.

So he silently apologized to them from the bottom of his heart.

He had intentionally trapped them in this. He had dragged them toward unavoidable battle when they might have been able to turn back had they tried.

There was no turning back now.

Fighting was the only option.

But that fighting would not take the form of the lovely girls working to kill each other.

Their wordless rejection creating a piercing atmosphere.

After feeling that wash over him, he tossed aside the special container and held a hand forward while still seated with his back against the column.

This was like that final mission all over again. He was taking on too great a burden and he was clearly going to crash and burn for it.

But that was fine with him.

He pulled back his index finger and winked.

The instructor announced the beginning of a special lesson.

“If you’ve got a problem with that, then come at me as a group. You idiots are not easy to teach, I’ll tell you that.”

### 3: An All-Out Battle Begins

He had known negotiations would break down.

They had all come here because they had something they refused to compromise on, so fighting was the only option. Crossing blades with them was the only way to respect their respective feelings to the fullest.

“…”

The girl in front of him inhaled and exhaled.

She showed off her undeveloped figure in a bodysuit, a sleeveless kimono top, and a front and back skirt.

That was Kuhou Ouka.

She kept her eyes on Sugiyado Souha who could not even stand up, but she suddenly aimed Midnight Tempest to the side.

She was targeting a kunoichi whose ninja outfit included a pleated miniskirt, giving it a combination of Japanese and Western styles. This one had a red hair extension.

That was Shirazaya Guren.

“!?”

With a boom, the merciless gunshot was blocked by a ninja sword guided by Steel Rope and the blonde kunoichi with small throat trembling nearly toppled over from the impact on her weapon.

While bending the gun to load a new round, twintailed Ouka made an announcement.

“Bara, Hoozuki…and Asagao. Work with me.”

“Wait, are you really doing this!? We’re talking about Sensei here!”

“Words won’t get us anywhere here. He’s as dead set on his course as we are ours, so we can’t make any progress without tearing down this wall. Isn’t that right, Sensei?”

Just as he smiled, vertically-stacked double-barreled Midnight Tempest produced a storm of flames that scorched the entire column he was leaning against.

But which side truly deserved the praise here?

There was no mass of carbon writhing in pain within those flames. Only a few light sounds. How in the world had he moved from his seated position leaning against the column? The next thing they knew, he had flown up to the top of the column and in fact was clinging upside down to the ceiling. Needless to say, he was not burned or even singed.

He could not carry a single injured companion, so his nimble movements were his one point of pride.

Ouka’s surefire attack had been easily avoided, but she smiled while her sleeveless kimono top and front skirt fluttered around her. She had the look of someone seeing a demotivated boxer climb back into the ring.

“You’re the best, Sensei!!” she roared.

She fired more flames, but none of them could find him. With light sounds, he set foot on the side of a different column and ran straight down to the ground.

At this point, the other ninjas were done hesitating. However it happened, they would fail to reach their goal if they were defeated here. That obvious fact had finally gotten through to them.

Kuhou Ouka flexibly moved her growing body to use bayonet-equipped Midnight Tempest as a blade and a gun. In addition to simple bullets, she used paintball-like capsule cartridges containing powerful acid or high-voltage capacitors. Combined with the unit that could fire ignited rocket fuel or liquid nitrogen, she was an all-rounder who could fight with every element.

It had two stacked barrels and she could choose which one to fire.

By loading each barrel with different types of rounds, she could choose to fire one or the other depending on the situation. While swishing around the rope that dangled from her hips like a cat’s tail, she danced across the battlefield and used a variety of combinations to make a weapon out of all types of phenomena.

At the same time, silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki used the pitching machine made from her off-road motorcycle to launch combination cross shurikens while suppressing the recoil with her back muscles. She no longer bothered hiding the roar of the engine.

Camouflage specialist Hanasawa Bara pulled some paper from her cleavage, loaded it into the tubes in her ringlet curls, and launched a colorful powder called Dizzy Eyes to the floor to mess with Sugiyado’s depth perception. In her bleached tight skirt military uniform, Shizukuma Asagao was sending her eyes around at dizzying speeds to work out a predicted course of action for Sugiyado.

But none of it went as planned.

Because those four students were not the only ones here.

“Dammit!! Stop right there, Sugiyado-san!!”

Chain links scraped together while guided by the invisible Steel Rope.

Those four were joined by Shirazaya Guren and Suiren who wore a combination of a sleeveless white kimono top and a pleated miniskirt. Sugiyado was up against a total of 6 elites. He had already withdrawn from active duty, so this was too much for him to handle.

Or so one would have thought.

“Eh? Ah!?”

The first to bring her baggy sleeves to her mouth and speak up in confusion was the youngest girl, Asagao, who was rapidly moving her eyes around the scene. Yes, when the outsider twins appeared on the board as allies rather than enemies, it had broken down all of her predictions and calculations.

If he were fighting any one of them head on, he may not have been able to win.

Not against Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, or Shizukuma Asagao.

And not against Shirazaya Guren or Suiren.

They were truly powerful.

But what if those powerful ninjas were suddenly forced to work with someone they barely knew and they kept tripping each other up? Then their great strength would only cause greater damage to each other during any accidents.

“What!?” shouted twintailed Ouka.

Her flamethrower and the weight at the end of a kusarigama struck the exact same point on a column, but Sugiyado Souha was no longer there.

He had flipped up into the air an he landed with his back against startled Ouka’s.

“Ouka, what is your greatest weakness? I believe I taught you this lesson over and over again.”

“What!?”

He did not give her time to load another round.

Ouka’s clothing swelled out and the tail-like red rope behind her fluttered while she spun around and launched a liquid nitrogen cartridge from Midnight Tempest despite being at close enough range to catch herself in the blast. She also used her spinning motion to make a horizontal sweep of the weapon.

But he nimbly ducked blow the ultra-cold attack while the sprinkler on the ceiling activated.

He swung a Fierce Fang so its ferocity tore through the artificial rain and the moisture flash frozen by the liquid nitrogen formed a clear blade around it. The kunai now almost looked like a katana of ice.

But while slender Kuhou Ouka took a fighting stance, he suddenly made a merciless attack on Shizukuma Asagao to the side.

“You always assume you’re at the center of the action!”

“!?”

Asagao did not know how to fight directly, so she could not dodge or defend herself. Her small face was colored only by surprise. Below her tight skirt military uniform, she was protected by an ultra-thin suit with a spider silk structure and solidified by a high-polymer water-absorbing gel and electric potential elastic fibers, but her exposed face was defenseless. That was an unavoidable fact of life for a kunoichi who augmented their more traditional strength by using their beauty as a weapon. Slamming that ice sword into her temple would knock her out much like a strike from the back of the blade.

“By the way, Asagao. I believe I told you to fix your bad habit of assuming ‘that couldn’t possibly be meant for me’ during group fights.”

“Don’t you dare!!”

A complex metal roar followed as Countless Calamities changed shape from its pitching machine form. Nantou Hoozuki, who wore an open-back one-piece swimsuit and baggy pants plus belts that bound her body, had transformed it into a different gadget. It looked like a giant brutal axe with two rollers that alternately sliced through everything. She bent her back like a bow and used her full body weight to swing it down.

But it did not matter.

She had mistaken what she was up against here.

“Hoozuki.”

The weapon of steel and the weapon of ice clashed. Sugiyado’s transparent katana was shattered far too easily.

But the kunai was still a kunai.

Hoozuki had been led astray by the apparent blade there, so she failed to stop her momentum and staggered forward. With his blade back to its original length, he reversed his wrist and stabbed the Fierce Fang forward as his true attack.

But not at Hoozuki.

At the giant axe made from her off-road motorcycle. As soon as she swung Countless Calamities down too hard and it carved into the floor, sending sparks everywhere, he caught its rapidly-rotating axis on his weapon.

“The number and complexity of your gadgets is impressive, but your focus draws too far inwards while you transform it. Your focus always needs to be on the world around you.”

He used the nitrogen to open up the air-pressure kunai’s blade to destroy the motor within, sending steel pieces flying off. The blast hit her so close up that her entire body was pummeled through her bulletproof ninja outfit and her back was slammed into a thick column. He did award her some points for not screaming.

Then he threw the already-opened Fierce Fang toward the center of her chest.

A sound like a bullet hit burst from her chest and the silver ponytail girl crumpled down. No matter how much the force was negated, the impact would still reach her, and this was a deadly weapon. Without that cutting-edge ninja outfit that could block a rifle bullet, it would have broken through her sternum and pierced her heart.

That left Kuhou Ouka in the sleeveless kimono top and front and back skirt and Hanasawa Bara in the oiran-style outfit that left her shoulders bare.

No, there was also the beautiful twins Shirazaya Guren and Suiren who created a cheerleader-like silhouette using their combination of sleeveless pure white kimono tops and pleated miniskirts.

Those two may not have cared if they hit Ouka’s group too because they kept sending their kusarigama weights and stick shurikens in from the side. The weapons followed unnatural paths that included right angle turns, so simply throwing them was not enough to explain it. That should have sent them along unpredictable paths that pierced the target’s body, yet that did not happen.

“Got him!!”

Guren’s throat trembled beautifully as she raised her voice at the tactile feedback she felt from the bracelet around her wrist. With Steel Rope’s guidance, the thick chain of her kusarigama had tangled itself around the kunai in Sugiyado Souha’s right hand. That would prevent him from using it.

If it were your average weapon.

At first, she seemed to find something off about how he did not even bat an eye at her supposed accomplishment.

“!?”

A moment later, the air-pressure kunai’s blade was forced open by the nitrogen, mercilessly breaking through the thick chain from within. It was likely made of a thick chromium or tungsten alloy, but that was no match for the 15 tons of force Fierce Fang could provide. The destruction was entirely thanks to how tightly she had wrapped the chain around it.

And it did not end there.

Sugiyado grabbed the end of the broken chain and swung it toward Guren, its actual wielder.

It did not hit, of course.

Those twin sisters could use their Steel Rope that used electromagnetism to alter the paths of their ninja swords and kusarigamas in midair. A thick chain swung with only one’s physical strength would simply have control retaken.

But that did not mean there was no risk to the blonde kunoichi. She would bleed just as red if the blade she was controlling hit her. She had to focus on even the slightest fluctuation in the electromagnetic control.

And.

Simply by twirling around and leaping like some kind of dance, he continually dodged the metal weapons their Steel Rope controlled using the Lorentz force.

“What!?”

“Keep moving, Guren!!”

Shirazaya Suiren was right. Guren could not afford to come to a stop just because she could not believe her eyes. Time was still passing.

Before she could analyze anything or reach any kind of solution, an unidentified ninja moved right up to her.

“!!”

The blonde girl swung her ninja sword with all her might. The steel blade was externally controlled via the Lorentz force, so it ignored her own muscles and moved almost automatically, as if according to a computer program. The Steel Rope could have dislocated both of her shoulders if it tried and it could also bring down all the steel balls launched by a directional landmine, but Sugiyado Souha did not change tack in fighting the ninja sword it controlled. He took a dancing step and slipped right past it.

He accurately stuck the tip of his Fierce Fang into the slight gap between the sword’s blade and its guard.

Then he opened it.

The brutal force of the nitrogen tore the ninja sword apart from within.

“Tch!?”

Thanks to the Steel Rope’s Lorentz force, the remnants of the broken sword remained floating in midair, but that did not change that the weapon had been destroyed while it was being swung down in a supposedly surefire strike. In a way, that was more difficult than simply taking her life and it was pure humiliation for the one on the receiving end.

“Damn you. Doing that in a serious battle is as infantilizing as patting me on the head!”

At this point, the kunoichi with a red hair extension noticed something was wrong. This was too much for an ordinary person to accomplish. Predicting the path of her and Suiren’s blades was impressive enough, but why was his kunai not captured by the Lorentz force? The lines of guiding magnetism and electromagnetism filled the space in a complex marble pattern and it would take knowing that like the back of your hand to pull off what he did.

But that was as far as her thoughts got.

The bottom of a Fierce Fang, where the instant nitrogen foam cartridge was inserted, struck her on the back of the head. The blow to her central nerves led to a pause. The light in her eyes faded in less than a second.

Her throat trembled irregularly and the air burst from her lungs.

Aim for a weak point and you could knock someone out even in a bulletproof spider silk ninja outfit. Even if you were a washed-up ninja whose back felt odd at 5kg and exploded with pain at 10kg.

“…”

He approached Shirazaya Suiren in the same way.

Those twins were meant to work as a pair, so they were far too fragile with one of the wings broken.

“Sorry.”

“Gh!?”

After a dull sound of impact, Suiren doubled over.

But she managed to stay on her feet for a moment.

“The bolts…in your spine? Yes, that explains it. You could feel the tug on the metal in your body, so you could read the electromagnetism.”

But only for a moment.

After another dull sound of impact, she dropped down.

With a new Fierce Fang in both hands, he faced his final foes.

This time, it really was only twintails Kuhou Ouka with her undeveloped figure and red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara with her sexy figure.

But taking out the twins had removed the interference.

With a solid thunk, Ouka returned her bent gun to normal.

Their group of four was not complete, but Ouka and Bara were excellent partners who could draw out each other’s power more than if they fought alone. And the purity of their combat had returned. Sugiyado Souha would be chewed up and spat out if he challenged them head on.

Yes.

If he did that.

“Ha…ha ha.”

Someone could be heard kicking off the column directly above.

(There he is.)

Sugiyado smiled in his heart, but the poor puppet had no way of noticing that.

It was the faceless ninja who had worn a gasmask before.

It was the assassin who had supposedly been stuffed in a large coin locker.

“You dumbass!! Never take your eyes off a pro ninja until you’ve delivered the killing blow!!”

“Welcome, fool. You’re right on time.”

If he had not wanted this, he would have killed the boy or knocked him unconscious. Why did the boy not realize that? Apparently even pros had a hard time breaking the bad habit of wanting to believe the convenient lies.

Just like Sugiyado Souha had when he had not noticed that his own students were rebelling.

The beautiful boy in a leather bodysuit truly caught Ouka and Bara off guard when he jumped in from above. After all, they had never even noticed that they and the Shogunate spy twins had nearly been slaughtered by PCB9.

And you could not plan around something you had never imagined.

After finally getting back on their feet, slender Ouka and curvy Bara were tripped up once more.

They were thrown into a three-way brawl without any time to prepare.

A storm of steel raged.

First, the beautiful boy wanted to have the upper hand over Sugiyado, so he tried to take the students hostage. However, that only led to the instructor’s air-pressure kunai roaring out and knocking the boy away. Redheaded ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara was caught in the blast, knocked onto her stomach, and squashed beneath the boy’s weight. Her large breasts squished softly between her body and the floor. The 18 coilgun launch tubes in her hair could not aim while similarly squished by her body.

“Sen-”

“Go to sleep, Bara.”

When he used a blow from the bottom of a kunai to send a nonlethal impact to the back of her neck, she went limp.

That left just one – Kuhou Ouka.

“!?”

“!”

The air was sliced through.

She raised Midnight Tempest and he raised a Fierce Fang, but they were too close together. He was already close enough to hug her. When it was time to use the bayonet, Midnight Tempest functioned more like a spear, so this range was better suited for the kunai.

He jammed the tip of the blade into the gap between the vertically-stacked barrels and used the nitrogen to pry them apart until they dully snapped.

When speed mattered more than weight, he could make good use of his body with three bolts in the spine and springs in the knees.

“We…”

The pieces of the hunting gun fell to the floor.

It had truly been one-on-one in the end there, but Sugiyado had still pushed through. Something escaped Ouka’s trembling lips while she showed off her growing figure with that white sleeveless kimono top and front and back skirt.

She sounded like she was enraged with the absurd violence, but also like she had seen the thing she had so longed to see.

“We only wanted to help you…even a little bit.”

“Thank you.”

In this Sugiyado Souha was entirely honest.

But then he reversed the hand holding the opened Fierce Fang and said more.

“But you still have much to learn.”

The bottom of the kunai roared over like a hammer.

With a dull thud, it knocked the girl unconscious.

## Chapter 6

### 1: Unforeseen Yet Inevitable

The battle was over.

Sugiyado Souha sighed while viewing the girls lying unconscious within the B3 plaza. He had been protecting them. This had been the only available method. He had achieved everything he set out to achieve. And yet it took all his might to avoid punching himself in the face.

He made a conscious effort to shift his focus.

He picked up his scattered Fierce Fang air-pressure kunais, swapped out the instant nitrogen foam cartridges, and stored them within the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. He would have to locate all the blood, sweat, hairs, and signs of destruction as well. He could not call himself a ninja if he did not at least eliminate any evidence that could be used to identify him.

(They were taught by me, so I should be able to borrow their tools.)

He scratched the scar on his nose, reached into collapsed Ouka’s pocket, and used the special sprayer he found there to clean up while focusing on his earphone.

“John, I’m done here. As promised, I will hand over the empty poison gas canister and the criminal. Tell me where to meet you.”

“Geez, you actually took them all out with your handicap? Now I feel dumb worrying about you, teach. I just sent some Tuxedos your way. You can’t carry someone thanks to your spine, right? Let my men take care of the girls.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it! The Kingdom’s gentlemen love this sort of job most of all. Anyway, we went ahead and threatened our Shogunate contact, but things aren’t looking good. You should probably be on your guard.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“We’re still negotiating with the isolationist government’s contact, but we can’t get anything solid out of them. I thought they were just panicking at first, but it doesn’t seem that way anymore. It’s like they can’t seem to contact their higher ups.”

“You mean those higher ups made a run for it while we still hold their Achilles’ heel? Not a chance.”

“Yeah. It’s possible they’re taking us for a ride here.”

“…”

Someone was taking advantage of this chaos.

They had predicted that things would be shaken up to an abnormal degree and they had used the confusion to accomplish something.

Sugiyado Souha himself had thought pressure from the Kingdom would make it too difficult for the Shogunate to continue covering for the bureaucratic advisor behind all this, so the villain would be cast out of the system and brought to a position where an individual could reach them.

But had someone else set things up so they could cause even greater damage?

“I should probably ask Ouka’s group why they decided to look into my past in the first place.”

“Yeah. Same with those Shogunate spy twins. I would recommend looking into what information they received that led them to ask you for help. The same person may have been behind both decisions.”

“You mean it was all to pit Ouka’s group and the twins against each other as two of the Shogunate’s most powerful ninja groups?”

“No.”

For the first time, their opinions diverged.

John had something else to say.

“They wanted to pit the old against the new – a Hidden One against Elite Ninjas. I don’t know who it was, but I bet you fighting your students was a part of their plan. The twins were only the detonator.”

“…”

“Since they tried to make it an even fight instead of a one-sided slaughter, they must have wanted to prolong the chaos as much as possible. But what did they hope to accomplish using that cover?”

And who was this person?

Not only had they planned something so ambitious, but they must have known about Sugiyado Souha’s final mission that the Shogunate had kept hidden. They also must have had no qualms about putting 200,000 innocent people in harm’s way to cover it all up. Even though they should have been assured a comfortable life by secretly threatening the Shogunate officials, so that ambition plan should have been unnecessary.

They had rejected that idea.

Even though they could have been given a secret position of absolute privilege where the government protected them so much they could kill someone in broad daylight and see no repercussions. So why? The Shogunate officials were nigh untouchable, but why discard that easy route in order to “eliminate” them?

While thinking through this issue, something crawled up in the back of Sugiyado Souha’s mind.

“It can’t be.”

“What?”

“No, it can’t be. It just can’t. She can’t possibly make an appearance now.”

He sounded like he was trapped in a nightmare.

But the questions from John had stopped. Ironically, it was the knight waiting up in the night sky who encountered the truth first.

Yes.

Physically encountered it.

“What the hell is that? …Wait. This atmosphere, this scent.”

“John?”

“Dammit. I get it now. Unless my sensors are broken, it’s that ghost!! This is indeed beyond your abilities. Engage!! I’ll start a defensive battle here and call in support from the aerial aircraft carrier even though this is nowhere near my jurisdiction! This warrants it!!”

“No, John!! If this is what I think it is, then not even a Kingdom armored knight can handle it!!”

The conversation ended there because the connection was severed.

(Dammit!!)

He could not control his heartrate. The bad feeling inside him only continued to grow. Waking up the others and taking them with him would only put them in more danger. He decided to do this alone. He hurried up the stairs to reach the closest exit from the underground mall. On the way, he passed by several people in the supposedly deserted place. Unlike him or Ouka, they were nondescript and inhumanly cold, so they had to be the Kingdom’s Tuxedos. They would look after Ouka and the others even though that would put them at greater risk. He gave them a bow out of obligation and not just appreciation.

He caught glimpses that something was amiss even before leaving the underground mall.

It was hot, but not due to the weather. It was like being thrown inside a stone oven. If the heat was this scorching from a distance, just how abnormal a situation would he find outside?

(Yes, it’s the same.)

As he ran, he was reminded of his past. He remembered when death had been a constant companion, when he had failed to predict anything at all, and when he had needed to constantly adlib ways to slip from the grim reaper’s grasp to survive. He had felt like he was crawling through an ocean of blood and mud. This had the same scent and atmosphere, but now was not the time to rejoice at the reunion.

(Come to think of it, I caught glimpses of this the entire time I pursued Ouka’s group with Guren and Suiren. This scent was in my nose the entire time. Yes, none of it ever actually ended. This is all a continuation of that final mission!!)

He finally reached the exit to the surface.

A scorching wind hit him like a solid wall as he set foot in the city night.

Everything was colored by a golden-burning hell.

The usual neon signs and car headlights were nowhere to be seen. Not even the ordinary darkness of the night was allowed to exist.

Molten rock covered everything.

A boiling sea of magma bubbled up like the fountain of youth, gas erupted out, and all forms of life were robbed of a livable environment.

There was no sign of John Kniferidge in his silver Claiomh Solais knight armor. However, some arms and legs from the unmanned musketeers who served the knights could be seen floating here and there in the bubbling lava.

He had almost certainly been shot down and the pilot’s survival was unknown.

It took dozens of this country’s armored samurai to just barely be powerful enough to defeat one of those armored knights, and victory was even more difficult when that knight was accompanied by a full unit of unmanned musketeers.

Yet one of those knights had been so easily defeated here.

That nightmare was back.

According to John, Kingdom agents who had infiltrated this country had come up with an excuse to evacuate the civilians from this area to protect them from the possible poison gas leak. Ouka’s group and the blonde twins would have been collected by the Tuxedos. But those were the only two pieces of good news.

Sugiyado looked up toward the moon as if mimicking his past actions.

Yes.

Sugiyado Souha had been badly injured during his final mission.

But who exactly had done it?

There was nothing to stand on for kilometers around. With a bit of bad luck, the tall reinforced concrete buildings might even tilt and sink into the lava.

Nevertheless, a beautiful girl in a ninja outfit was illuminated by both the lava erupting from the depths of the earth and the cold moonlight pouring down from the heavens. Her clothing was similar to Kuhou Ouka’s, but also different. It was still a bodysuit combined with a white sleeveless kimono top and a front and back skirt, but the sides of the top were left wide open and the back fell below her hips like a coat, making it look like a cross between an ancient queen’s dress and a surgical gown.

It would not have been originally designed to create such obvious sex appeal. It would have been designed to best draw out the special trait of a young girl – that is, a protective desire and a cute impression that would cause any attacking hands to hesitate. A split second could be the difference between life and death in the ninja world, so being adorable could be a deadly weapon there.

But the impression changed entirely when the person within it had changed.

You could say she had matured and then some as a girl, and you could even say she had begun to rot. That monster’s demeanor – no, her seduction – was reminiscent of a fruit with an intensely sweet smell. The fact that she was originally the cute type made this change seem all the more alluring, sweet, and (most of all) immoral.

Her madness drew people in to a gruesome extent.

She was like a Venus flytrap.

You could even say she embodied the seduction of death. The grim reaper’s scythe that gave people everlasting peace may have been coated with a poison this sweet. He knew the truth here, but if he did not focus his mind, his thoughts would have been stirred up from outside and his concentration would have been forcibly disturbed. Even though she was not trying to do anything of the sort.

“…”

To reiterate, there was nothing to stand on and she was not standing on the ground, yet there she was.

She was floating.

She hovered about 5m above the sea of lava.

What were ninja techniques?

The ones used in the current age were best described as an adaptation of stage magic. Special tools were set up in advance, wires were laid out in secret, and then you waited for your opponent to be fooled. Realists who claimed they only believed what their own eyes showed them would fall for the illusion and be left in the depths of confusion. It could all be explained using tricks, so it all came down to one’s breadth of knowledge. That was how it was supposed to work.

But this girl was the one exception.

This was something entirely different from the ninja techniques that used an extension of existing techniques to create new, modern equipment. This took things so far that even a front-line Hidden One found it grotesque.

This absolute absurdity was even more bizarre than the ninjas seen in old stories.

She had taken ninja techniques to a truly occult place.

She used the term “psychic” to realize the illusions behind ninja techniques. The inside of her skull was covered in a material that absorbed electromagnetic waves to remove all external EM interference and a pacemaker had been implanted in her healthy heart to let her consciously alter her heart rate like changing gears. Thanks to those changes, she could guide herself into an extreme trance whenever she liked.

The bolts in Sugiyado’s back ached ominously.

No, the ache came from the wound a certain girl had given him.

That sword strike had not just physically wounded him; it had left its scars on his psyche as well.

He knew her name.

The figure showing through her spider silk ninja outfit was awfully sensual. Long hair flowed down her back and two shorter bundles of hair fell to either side of her head. That glossy black hair contained a bewitching sheen. But he could never forget. He still vividly remembered the name of the one who had slashed his back.

They belonged to the same rank, the same system, and the same world.

She existed beyond even the Elite Ninjas who stood at the top of the existing High, Middle, and Low hierarchy. She was one of the Hidden Ones, whose total numbers not even he knew.

So he shouted her name, as if facing his past.

“Oniyuri!!”

He heard a quiet voice.

It was a laugh.

Her head tilted at an angle, a stray strand of hair had found its way between her lips, and a sticky clear liquid dripped from the corner of her lips. The red of her cheeks had to be more than just reflected lava light. One look at her excessively damp eyes was enough to tell she was using Divine Decree. She had consciously turned an invisible dial to send herself on a “trip”.

With her melted gaze on him, that disaster in human form continued laughing.

She was undoubtedly one of the Hidden Ones.

She was one of the elites of the elite who had been there with Sugiyado Souha in an older era.

“So we meet again, instructor.”

“…”

“I can call you that now, can’t I? I have been dreaming of you this whole time. It is too late to try to save someone only after arriving on the battlefield, so you wanted to teach people everything they needed to survive before the fighting began. Wasn’t that your dream?”

This was an inner motivation that not even Ouka’s group or the twins knew about.

Oniyuri’s knowledge of that fact hinted that she had not simply been an enemy originally.

She had not been an ally by any means, but he had not wanted to call her an enemy.

Like a marriage scammer, she had a way of remaining in your heart even after you were deceived. Not even someone on Sugiyado Souha’s level could find quite the right word to describe her.

She truly embodied the feminine side of being a ninja.

She was the perfect kunoichi.

“What have you been doing all this time?”

“Nothing really. I lived through that past, I’m facing this present, and I need to decide what future to seek out. Although if I hadn’t done anything, I doubt anything would have changed.”

What did it feel like to mechanically alter your brain using an external device?

Whatever the case, Oniyuri could not stop smiling while drawing out psychic powers from her brain’s trance state.

She stuck out her unexpectedly long tongue and wet her lips.

“But that would have been boring, so I decided to break free of the Shogunate’s chains. The Tenshukaku at the top is protected by this country’s most powerful system, but that security will temporarily freeze during an incident so earthshattering that the entire Shogunate hierarchy is shaken. So I just had to make my move in that moment.”

“…”

“So don’t worry, instructor. All the sketchy people keeping watchful eyes on you have been returned to the earth. Oh, but I do apologize if you wanted to kill them yourself. I didn’t even leave any ashes behind.”

It finally started to sink in what Sugiyado had been a part of here.

It had all been so she could leave.

The series of shocking events beginning with the modular nuclear reactor had been too much for the top of the Shogunate to bear. They had wanted something to rely on to escape that pressure, so they had opened this Elite One’s cell so she could eliminate those four Elite Ninjas. They had chosen to release this calamitous beast if it would bring about a swift end to their problems.

Had they felt there was no point in holding back?

But surely they should have known who their assassin would devour first once that cell door had opened.

“How far did you take it?”

“Hee hee. You really have changed, instructor. You have found a path of comfortable change taking you in the direction you desired. I, on the other hand, have been stuck in a standstill this entire time.”

“How much damage did you do to the Tenshukaku and how many samurai heads did you take, Oniyuri!?”

He just about overlooked it, but it hit him a moment later.

Stuck in a standstill?

She had not changed – could not change.

“Wait, no, it can’t be.”

“Are we done talking now? Hee hee. My blood hasn’t been pumping like this in a long time. Yes, I thought I might not know what to do with myself after finding freedom for the first time in forever, but I didn’t. Yes, this is what I really wanted to do.”

The floating girl glowed bewitchingly in the lava light within her ninja outfit that resembled an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown, and she pointed her skinny index finger toward the heavens.

Immediately, the world converged.

All the scorching lava covering kilometers of the ground began to move like a living creature as she controlled it with her psychic Divine Decree power. The hellish deluge that had swallowed up everything here began to swirl, break free of the planet’s gravity, and gather on a single point. Yes, directly above Oniyuri’s raised finger.

In the end, the blazing hot mass was smaller than a basketball.

That flood of lava could have swallowed up an entire small village, so this extreme pressure caused it to glow all the more sinisterly. Sugiyado Souha gulped as he looked up at it.

His hand trembled while holding a Fierce Fang.

It’s all happening again, he thought.

He had once fought behind the scenes to save a foreign queen caught between the Kingdom and the Shogunate. It had ended in a draw and his body had been left scarred. This was the secret technique he had seen back then.

With her tongue hanging limply from her lips with a thin strand of saliva dripping from it, the horrifyingly beautiful girl spoke with a crazed smile on her lips.

“Hee hee. How about this as an opening move? I am a bit tired right now, so we can finish this later, okay?”

This was not the Strategic Martial Arts approved by this country and its Shogunate. Modern ninja techniques took the arresting techniques and military martial arts based on old-fashioned karate, judo, and kendo and updated them in order to save as many people as possible during times of turmoil. They were powerful techniques, but that was all they were. So this was different. What could you hope to protect using a power as sinister as this?

This was an uncontrollable power that would simply destroy everything in its path.

“An annihilating sun,” muttered Sugiyado Souha in a daze.

A moment later, the girl snapped her fingers with a meaningful smile and the raised sphere burst. A scorching hell erupted in all directions with more than twice the intensity with which it had been gathered.

A paper tiger like his air-pressure kunai was entirely useless in the face of the truly supernatural.

### 2: The Final Heroine

There once was an unfortunate girl.

That was the only way to describe that small girl who crawled through a living hell thoroughly calculated out and managed by the state.

But the one thing she hated more than anything was for people to feel sorry for her.

Anyone could tell she carried a misguided sort of pride.

The purpose she saw in her life had likely been implanted within her by someone else. People could survive in the worst of conditions if they had a goal to work toward. They could bear with it if they had hope. If they thought of themselves as a special chosen one who could do what no else could, then they would not question the special role given to them and they would in fact find pride in it. All because the adults around her – the Shogunate officials who were supposed to be the guardians of law and order – had taught her to believe those things.

There had never been any need for her to go along with it.

She had Divine Decree. Her skull had been sliced up like tofu, a material to absorb electromagnetic waves had been pasted to the inside, and a pacemaker had been implanted in her healthy heart to externally control her heartrate. Perhaps it was true that she had been chosen. But was that really an honor? Hadn’t they only been looking for a convenient person who would not complain as they did all of that to her?

The ugly duckling was really a swan.

But was it really all that great to find out you were a swan who no one wanted to be around?

Long ago, Sugiyado Souha had met her.

The Shogunate and the Kingdom had been fighting over the young queen in an extreme game of beach flags where they wanted to be the first to the queen for their own selfish purposes, even if they crushed her in their grasp or only managed to take a piece of her corpse.

That had been his final mission.

She had been one of the pursuers and he was assisting the pursued queen, so they had been enemies. But after attempting to understand her thoughts so he could predict her actions, he may have developed a deeper connection to her than anyone else.

He had learned about her and she had come to understand him.

Which was why he had failed.

He could have stopped. He would have been perfectly justified in focusing on the Kingdom’s small queen and cutting down that formidable foe.

But it was one more person.

Just one more.

That was how he had seen it.

And then he could not escape another thought: I want to save this girl.

Even if no one else wanted it, he had wanted to bring Sagami Oniyuri out into the light.

That was all he had wanted.

### 3: Rebooting in the Apartment

“Sensei!!”

Even the stirring of his body felt weird. Sugiyado Souha gave a scratchy groan that did not sound like his own voice and opened his eyes to find himself lying down somewhere. He also saw four girls looking down at him.

They were Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

“Are you okay? Honestly though, what even happened!?”

Twintail Ouka was wearing a knit sweater and a miniskirt as she moved her face in close as if leaning over him, but he did not respond as he slowly sat up. He wanted to know the current situation. What had happened since Sagami Oniyuri’s Divine Decree had covered a quarter of New Yokohama with lava?

“The ordinary people are safe,” said slender Ouka. “The entire city was on edge after the central heating explosion in the underground mall, so they had mostly evacuated indoors. They fled to the upper floors once the lava showed up, so apparently no one was caught in it. I’ve heard everyone is terrified because they think those were linked terrorist attacks.”

“We can only be grateful that social media can get word around quickly and that this country is so good at disaster relief despite being horribly unprepared for war,” said Bara who was wearing a cardigan over an otherwise light outfit.

“I see,” sighed Sugiyado.

He knew he was being naïve, but he could not deny how relieved he was to learn so little damage had been done. Even though Oniyuri must have already left the Tenshukaku soaked with blood.

This had revealed the handiwork of a ninja to the public on an unprecedented scale, but that very scale left the ordinary people unsure what had happened. Social media could not track down the truth on this one. No one thought a single individual could have caused that.

“Then where are we?”

His torn and bloody clothes had been replaced with new ones. A new short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, to be exact. So who exactly had known his taste in clothing and actually changed the clothes for him? When he looked at the girls, they all avoided looking him in the eye for some reason. Why were all their faces red? Especially Ouka. The way she held a hand over her nose made it look like she had a nosebleed or something.

Also, he had not been taken to a hospital room. This was a small rundown room with a tatami mat floor. It was a super-cheap apartment. The lack of light coming through the window and the clock on the wall told him it was night had already fallen. He looked around and finally remembered where this was.

“Hello, honored guest. Neither of us fared well out there, did we? But it was a slap from a beauty, so I’m willing to forgive her.”

John Kniferidge was wrapped in bandages, had one arm in a cast, and wore a leather jacket over a flight suit.

“From the look of you, I take it your knight armor is in the lava.”

“I’m actually glad it was melted so nicely. I don’t want the Shogunate retrieving some half-destroyed scraps.” John sighed. “I’m also glad there was a room we could use. I’m not a spy or a Tuxedo, so I’d be in trouble if I tried to wander around in enemy territory like this.”

They were interrupted by an exaggerated sigh.

It came from someone with a white dress and beautiful blonde hair shining in the room’s light, but who was on the opposite side of the conflict from John. It was one of the Shogunate spy twins.

Shirazaya Guren’s slender throat trembled as she spoke up.

“I never imagined we would be using a Kingdom spy hideout.”

“If it is true this man has been assisting you, then this is a very alarming development, Sugiyado-san.”

Both twins were icily glaring at him.

Yet they were somehow hesitant to say too much, so they may have had a hunch that it was the Kingdom’s Tuxedos who rescued them from that lava hell while they were unconscious.

Before he could say anything in his defense, Hanasawa Bara crossed her arms in her cardigan and tight skirt, lifting up her large breasts, and opened her mouth.

“That is not true. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This is a room Sensei prepared for himself and they copied his key and started using it without his permission. The room belongs to Sensei.”

“That doesn’t really matter.” The young bob cut girl in a knit dress passed him a cup of water with the hands sticking out of her baggy sleeves, so he rubbed Shizukuma Asagao’s small head while finally opening his mouth. “Guren and Suiren? Ninjas like us are not an official army like the samurai or knights. We are nameless spies gathered to achieve the results that are needed but cannot be written in any official paperwork. So don’t get caught up in the official lines between enemy and ally. The world is overrun with problems that can’t be solved from just one direction.”

One blonde kunoichi held out her arm to show him the tracking bracelet she wore.

“The Shogunate will not defend you in this.”

“Of course they won’t. The day they start officially defending stuff like this is the day they’re finally overthrown. Although I’ll be curious to see how they plan to get back on their feet now that the Tenshukaku at the top have been slain.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, so the twins had to sigh again. Were they impressed by how he lived his life, or had they decided nothing could ever fix his stupidity?

The girls gathered around the uncomfortable bedding began speaking once more.

First up was silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki who stretched her back inside a loose sweat hoodie.

“Sensei, it’s about time you told us just what we were made a part of.”

“I suppose so,” said Sugiyado.

He chose to speak it all aloud here to help him organize his own confused thoughts.

“There was a kunoichi named Sagami Oniyuri.”

John stiffened at that name since he had been directly involved in the final mission.

The girls had arrived later than that, so it did not mean much of anything to them.

“The general public thinks of ninjas as people who can clasp their hands together and hold a scroll in their mouth to create an explosion of smoke and solve everything, but that kind of ninja does not really exist. Oniyuri, however, is an exception. Her body has been modified in 88 places – primarily in the brain and heart – to give her the psychic powers needed to take a step into the mystical realm with her ninja techniques.”

That was what had created that lava sea.

Sugiyado held his head in a hand.

“Oniyuri has made those psychic powers her own and I doubt anyone but her knows what exactly Divine Decree is. I have tried to explain it rationally, like that she uses telekinesis to float and that she rapidly vibrates molecules to create heat, but all I have is speculation.”

“But why do this now, Sensei?”

Black bob cut Shizukuma Asagao tilted her extremely small head.

“You’re looking at this wrong.” The boy’s answer was obvious. “Oniyuri has been crawling through that same hell ever since what happened back then. Because I failed to grab her hand, she has continued to sink into the darkest parts of the Shogunate.”

“Sensei…”

“So she plotted a way to escape on her own. I can’t even imagine how many layers of security are generally applied to a kunoichi who can use that psychic Divine Decree as a weapon, but she was waiting all this time for that perfect hierarchy to be shaken. All while she occasionally leaked some information to you four or to Guren and Suiren as they pursued you.”

It was now the white dress twins’ turn to bring a hand to their foreheads where they stood over by the wall.

“You mean we were being manipulated too?”

“We are Shogunate spies, but we have never even heard the name Oniyuri.”

Sugiyado shook his head.

“In a way, she is a more perfect ninja than I am. If me having connections to both the Shogunate and the Kingdom was enough to surprise you, then you can’t even imagine how deep the rabbit hole goes with Oniyuri.”

Besides.

“Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, Asagao. I know you were angry that I was being treated unfairly, but where did those feelings begin?”

“What? But…but we don’t need a reason to want-!”

“The Shogunate is thoroughly covering up everything about what happened to me back then, so you would never start to question my past for no reason. That alone is proof that their media manipulation defenses were falling apart.”

“…”

“Someone must have been giving you glimpses of that information out in the open and in secret. For example, hearing ‘multiple sources’ insulting me behind my back but where you could hear them. But those people who thought themselves so knowledgeable while they whispered questionable secrets to each other were only being manipulated by a game of telephone that began with Oniyuri back in her cell. They played right into her hand without noticing any of it. Then you picked up on that and began developing exactly the emotions she was hoping for.”

That technique was more like the Machiavellianism of a harem than a ninja technique, but that too was part of a kunoichi’s repertoire. This was not a sport with separate weight classes where arm strength and lung capacity did all the talking. For better or for worse, they brought those “feminine” aspects to the battlefield.

She had slipped malicious information to the people who visited her cell and used their mouths to spread rumors like a game of telephone to ultimately have Ouka’s group cause trouble. She had never expected Guren and Suiren to be able to stop them. In fact, the trick had been to delay the conclusion until the Shogunate leaders panicked and decided to release her from her cell to resolve it as soon as possible. And once she was out, she immediately bit the hand that fed her and assaulted the Tenshukaku. Everything that had happened was connected.

She had soaked the Tenshukaku in blood.

That was simple enough to say, but Sugiyado guessed that she had made it look like an indiscriminate slaughter when she actually intentionally left a certain number of survivors behind. But not out of the goodness of her heart. Then the Council of Elders would see it as a chance to take power for themselves or to assist the Shogunate’s recovery as a favor they could cash in on later. The many conflicting plots that would spring up would end up binding them. The fact that news of the attack on the Tenshukaku was still being thoroughly suppressed made it clear that something was up.

Ninjas did more than make use of preexisting cracks. At Oniyuri’s level, they could smash a solid monolith to pieces.

“And with Guren and Suiren, it was a little too convenient that they managed to reach me so soon after Ouka’s group got into trouble. While they’re irreplaceable students for me, they were already Elite Ninjas working for the center of the state, so they must have connections to tens of thousands of people, including the invisible ones of profit even they aren’t aware of. I doubt you could have pinpointed me as a relevant party so quickly without assistance. I imagine someone casually dropped you a hint or went around eliminating all your other theories. All while they had no idea they were relaying a message for Oniyuri. There would have been no material evidence there. John or Violia could probably have smelled it, but that only works for someone who was in a direct confrontation with her.”

“Understood. We can reach a conclusion about that later, so let’s learn about our enemy now.”

“I find this hard to believe, but those doubts will only delay us right now. Please go ahead.”

“Sure.” Sugiyado Souha nodded. “You really could call it a grand plan. I can’t even imagine how many people now lie dead in the bloody Tenshukaku. But her actual objective must be incredibly simple.”

“?”

Kuhou Ouka tilted her head with her growing figure contained in a knit sweater and miniskirt.

“She wants freedom. She wants to travel the world as she likes without anyone restricting her. That is all she wants. It is all she has ever wanted since I first met her.”

In other words, in the years since he had let go of that freedom-seeking girl’s hand, she had been meaninglessly imprisoned, subjected to insane human experiments at the hands of the Shogunate which claimed to advocate justice, and only been allowed outside when it was time to defeat and kill someone. That feeling of being trapped and hopeless was something that Sugiyado could never even imagine after living his life as an instructor and supported by so many people.

“Who’s supporting her?” John sounded exasperated with his arm in a sling. “Biting the hand that feeds you and devouring the rest of them to escape your cage will only get you so far. I doubt any individual who attacks an entire nation will last long. We won’t touch this one, but what about Asia or the New World? Does she have some hidden thread connecting back to a force powerful enough to rival the Shogunate?”

“No, I doubt she has something like that. She simply wants to rejoice in her freedom. It might only last a minute or a second, but she loves true freedom. The protection of some other organization would only sully it. Those bonds would only get in her way.” Sugiyado slowly exhaled. “Why did she use her psychic Divine Decree to fly to New Yokohama Domain immediately after slaughtering the Tenshukaku in Tokyo? Why did she burn down a quarter of the city upon seeing me? Why was she waiting there to speak with me? The answer is obvious: she’s going down the list of things she wanted to do once she was free. This isn’t about some larger group and its interests. This is all there is to her.”

Someone audibly gulped.

This insanity was enough to fill the room with silence.

“B-but doing that is suicide.”

“John. She has not changed at all since we last saw her.”

John initially frowned, unsure what the boy meant, so Sugiyado broke it down for the man and restated it.

“I’m saying she still has those body modification implants in 88 parts of her body. The simple act of walking creates enough force to lift up her internal organs. Plus, she has her psychic flight. It might look like she does not feel any weight, but when she ends the flight and lands, the burden is even greater than what we feel. Yet she is still the same as she was on the inside. Do you get what that means?”

“That would make a complete mess of her insides!”

“It’s honestly a miracle she’s lived this long. She has nearly 90 implants in her body and just one of them catching on a blood vessel or organ can kill her.”

“But…but why, Sensei?”

Kuhou Ouka looked pale and Sugiyado shook his head.

“I’ve never heard of Divine Decree ninjas being mass produced. That means they never could make another one of her, so I imagine the Shoguante wasn’t willing to let go of such a valuable specimen. I mean, no one can explain how she works, so swapping out any of the parts could ruin the perfect balance and make her lose the psychic powers.”

The Shogunate had intended to force her to live that life for years or even decades until they finally cracked it. They knew deep down that analyzing it was not possible, but the prospect was too attractive to let her go.

That was why Sagami Oniyuri had quickly given up on obeying the Shogunate.

She would not last long either way. The Shogunate had no intention of swapping out her parts and she could not acquire the parts or update them on her own. And of course, simply pulling the implants out of her body would not save her either. She was blocked at every turn. So even if it was only for a moment, she wanted to experience true freedom. That may have been how she broke.

“So is that psychic stuff the secret of your final mission that the Shogunate was so desperate to hide? Not that it matters now that Oniyuri defeated the villains in the Tenshukaku.”

Twintail Ouka pouted her lips a little bit in her miniskirt and sweater. That girl with an undeveloped figure must have wanted to bring the villains to court to recover Sugiyado Souha’s honor, no matter what the secret turned out to be.

“Most likely. But come to think of it,” said Sugiyado. “Yes, I think Oniyuri’s presence may have settled all of that.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

John looked puzzled and Sugiyado shrugged.

“Back then, I wasn’t aware that her psychic powers had been created under the name of Divine Decree. John, you didn’t either, did you? That means she wasn’t being used in actual combat yet back then. They were only sending her in for a trial run to gather test data.”

“You mean they sent such an unstable form of firepower to that battle over our queen? To be clear, our Kingdom saw that entire event as one step away from doomsday.”

“I imagine the Shogunate had not planned for what happened there either. In their original scenario, they only wanted to test her against you knights who were fighting for the honor of rescuing that little thing – or as they saw it, using that as an excuse to test our strength and steal our tech. She was unstable and difficult to control at the time, but her initial objective was to pursue you and that led to attacking the queen. The chain of command meant to bind her then must have collapsed.”

“Yeah, if it got out they chose another country’s head of state to test their new experimental weapon on, it could only lead to all-out war. We would have to respond to such arrogant provocation.”

“Although I bet the Shogunate officials were more aghast than anyone since they had only wanted experimental data on the psychic powers. They completely lost control. Oniyuri was wandering around without anyone capable of accurately aiming her, so she could have killed your queen at any time. If that huge a mistake ever got out, they were done for. It didn’t matter what they had intended to do. Sending in such a risky weapon at all would be enough for a major international incident. And explaining themselves would have required revealing their top secret Divine Decree research. They would have to tell everyone about the tech they thought they had entirely to themselves, so they were all forced to pretend they knew nothing at all about what was happening.”

“Um.” Twintail Kuhou Ouka raised her hand. “But, Sensei, wasn’t staying quiet the more dangerous option?”

“Which is why the interest was piling up all the while. Right up until Oniyuri used the recent chaos to take off the officials’ heads.”

They finally had a picture of the entire incident, but it was too late. Everything had changed from the moment Sagami Oniyuri appeared out in the open.

The red hair extension girl, Shirazaya Guren, spoke while crossing her arms by the wall.

“Do you have any idea what she will do next?”

“She must have a long list of things she wants to do. But while she wants to enjoy her freedom to its fullest, she doesn’t have much time. She won’t be able to create any new friends or lovers, so she should try to use her old acquaintances to act out her desires.”

“Hold on…are you saying what I think you’re saying!?”

“Me, John, and the queen. We are the only ones who reached an understanding with her during that final mission. We’re the only ones she has to rely on. There are billions of people out there and she can manipulate them with her Machiavellian trickery, but we are the only ones she has established a real connection with.”

Also, given what she had been through, it was unclear if she had ever learned how to hold ordinary relationships or how to judge her distance with someone.

They had come to understand each other during their pursuit and fierce fighting. They had needed to understand each other to threaten them, persuade them, fight them, escape them, outdo them, and kill them. And beyond Oniyuri’s calculated Machiavellianism, if she had only ever learned one way to search out what someone thought, she might very well throw a flood of lava at someone like anyone else would ring their neighbor’s doorbell.

In a way, Sugiyado and John had been the ones to teach her to do that.

By engaging in such an extreme form of communication with her in the past.

“So if we use you as bait, we can draw out Oniyuri?”

“I couldn’t tell you which one of us she’ll go after first, though. John, you fought her when you lost your armor, right? How did she react?”

“She entirely ignored me. She didn’t seem happy to see me and she didn’t seem to see me as a threat either. She held out a hand without even looking in my direction and then…crash. Maybe she’s only interested in fellow ninjas.”

“If so, the little queen won’t work either. So she’s only interested in me, huh?”

Everyone’s eyes focused on Sugiyado sitting on the futon.

A stiff smile appeared on Kuhou Ouka’s face.

“Y-you’re kidding, right? You barely survived what happened earlier! You can’t do that!! A-and based on what I’ve heard, um!!”

“You can say it. I couldn’t beat her. And that’s why I lost my wings.”

Even in his prime, his entire body had been destroyed in multiple ways and he had just barely survived it. Now a 5kg weight made his back feel funny and a 10kg one caused it to explode with pain. If he tried that again with that extreme handicap, the odds of survival would be even lower. Victory was entirely out of the question.

However…

“I have to stop Oniyuri. You see what her psychic powers can do, right? This is too much for even the Shogunate to cover up.”

“Kh.”

A sea of lava had covered everything.

She had done enough damage to wipe a small village or town from the map. But instead of the result of thorough preparation, it had been done in lieu of a greeting. It was the result of overwhelming talent.

Sagami Oniyuri was neither good nor evil.

She simply wanted to rejoice in her true, unrestricted freedom for as long as possible. But if the needle of her interest turned even slightly toward destruction, tens of thousands would die. No, it was even possible that one girl’s power could bring down an entire country.

The pure destruction was not the only threat. If she continued causing mass destruction on a scale too large to cover up, the people’s fear and dissatisfaction would grow to the bursting point and mass hysteria on the level of the witch hunts could sweep across the country. If enough people began to think the Shogunate was not going to save them, the entire system would collapse in no time.

After all, there was no way of testing to see if someone had psychic powers.

That unrestricted freedom would swallow up all else.

It was her lack of good or evil that made Oniyuri’s catastrophe unavoidable. You could not behave yourself as a good boy or girl so she would spare you and you could not slip her a bribe under the table. So once the people’s fear and dissatisfaction passed a certain threshold, the dominos would already be falling.

“We have to do something.” Silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki stretched her back in her sweat hoodie and kept a hand on her downturned forehead. “Sensei is right. We can’t just let her do this. If the Tenshukaku was wiped out and the Shogunate isn’t functioning, then we’ll have to do something ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Shirazaya Suiren over by the wall. “While I do find it hard to believe the Shogunate is no longer functioning, the spies like us can still act. If a monster is threatening the peace of our world, I can see no reason not to set out to slay it.”

“Don’t worry,” said bandaged John Kniferidge. “Like I said before, you aren’t alone. You have your connections with me and my queen. Besides, with her power, she could probably attack the Kingdom’s homeland by messing with the earth’s crust or something. This is already our problem.”

Sugiyado Souha thought for just a moment.

He realized just how blessed he was.

He bowed his head once before stating his conclusion.

“Then this will be the final battle. I’ll be placing everyone here on the board, so prepare yourselves.”

### 4: Briefing Before Facing the End

Listen up, everyone.

There is no need to review past combat data. I actually fought Oniyuri in that erased past, so I can explain her behavioral patterns to you.

She should make an appearance wherever I happen to be. Even if it is an obvious trap. For better or for worse, she is confident in her psychic Divine Decree power. She will assume she can break through whatever we have prepared for her.

Which means I want to avoid any kind of populated area.

We will use the container yard at New Yokohama Harbor’s #2 Wharf. That area has rapidly expanded thanks to the popularity of online shopping and flea market apps, but if we have the night guards leave, it will be almost entirely abandoned at night.

I want as much help as I can get, but I believe I taught you in that giant subway station that it’s hard for a makeshift team to immediately pull off professional level teamwork. So I would like to split you into your pre-existing teams and leave each team in charge of a specific section.

Ouka and Bara will act as our direct fighters.

Oniyuri has her psychic powers, but she is still human. She has vital points and she can bleed out. Do not feel more fear than necessary and do your job.

Hoozuki and Asagao will patrol the area and analyze the combat situation.

The earlier we locate Oniyuri’s presence, the better our odds. And after the initial clash, you need to constantly track the locations of enemy and ally alike while sharing that intel in real time. Intelligence is crucial in a ninja battle. If our soldiers lose their eyes and ears, they can’t win. We’re counting on you.

Guren and Suiren will be my bodyguards.

I hate to say it, but I can’t join the battle properly with these injuries, so I’m counting on you two. That might make you sound like passive defenders, but since Oniyuri’s top priority will be going after me, you will be on the front line.

John, you focus on providing logistical support since you lost your knight armor.

Arrange for a motorboat we can use to escape out to sea if my students screw this up. Our opponent can throw lava at us, but the vast ocean should rapidly cool the lava and make it a whole lot less deadly. You are our final safety net. Don’t let your guard down.

And one last thing.

Needless to say, Oniyuri can control a whole lot of lava using Divine Decree. Think of it less like fire and more like powerful acid being magnetically pulled around. That means moving around on the ground will be suicide – you’ll just be swallowed up by that scorching lava. Always take the high ground on piles of containers or a gantry crane or wherever. But height alone isn’t good enough. Don’t forget to choose a location that has at least two escape routes. Fail to do that and you will die.

The lava does not just form an ocean or a flood. It responds to Oniyuri’s will and moves around like it has a mind of its own. I said it’s seemingly being magnetically pulled around, right? That means keeping the high ground only gets you so far. Let your guard down and you’ll be taken out even there, so be careful.

Do you understand the situation now?

Oniyuri is not an easy opponent to beat, but there is no such thing as a truly unbeatable enemy. I want you to surpass me by doing what I once failed to do: defeat Oniyuri.

Good luck.

I will see you on the battlefield.

The promised time of 2 AM arrived.

Twintail Kuhou Ouka had arrived at New Yokohama Harbor’s #2 Wharf with her undeveloped figure dressed in her ninja outfit of a bodysuit, a sleeveless kimono top, and a front and back skirt. She looked around worriedly, causing the red rope hanging from the back of her hips to sway like a cat’s tail.

“He’s not here?” she muttered under her breath before speaking to the other ninjas hidden in the darkness. “Bara, Asagao! Have you seen Sensei!?”

“No,” said the bright red ringlet curls girl in an oiran-style outfit that left her elbows bare. She crossed her arms in a way that lifted up her chest and the sash that dangled down in place of a front skirt fluttered in the night breeze while she looked in a different direction.

She viewed the blonde twins who were leaning against a metal container with a combination of a sleeveless kimono top and a pleated miniskirt that gave them a cheerleader-like silhouette.

“We have not seen him either.”

“But that would mean…”

The injured knight in a flight suit and leather jacket had come all this way for his old friend, but now he breathed a heavy sigh while scratching at his head.

Then he threw his tablet full of mission information to the ground.

“That son of a bitch!! He intentionally gave us the wrong location! Is he trying to do it all himself, just like he did back then!?”

### 5: Once More

Why he could not bring the others with him could not have been more obvious.

First of all, Oniyuri was powerful. There was no guarantee they could win even if they worked together to fight her and, even if they managed to win, who could say how many of those beautiful girls would have bubbling lava dumped over their heads in the process. He could not force that choice onto them.

And second.

He knew it made him dumb as could be, but even after losing everything, Sugiyado Souha still could not imagine defeating Sagami Oniyuri while she continued to crawl through the darkness. He could not imagine killing her and just moving on.

He wanted to save her.

After all, what was different about her from other people? What made her different from Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, Shizukuma Asagao, Shirazaya Guren, Shirazaya Suiren, or even the ordinary girls who walked through the city eating ice cream?

After his final mission, he had hoped to become an instructor and that dream had come true.

It was too late to start working to protect people once the action had already begun, so he wanted to make sure they were prepared in advance. He wanted to give them the skill they needed to survive.

But.

However.

He had also wanted one more name on his list of students: Sagami Oniyuri. No, she was the reason for it all in the first place. He had met a fundamentally misguided girl on the battlefield and he had wished for a place that could teach her what was right. He had wished to give her a chance at a real life. That was what had motivated him in everything he had done since.

He felt like he had reduced the number of girls like Oniyuri since then. Now that Ouka’s group could laugh together as friends, they would not have to wander the world with such a dark look in their eyes.

But that did not mean he had saved Oniyuri herself.

He had long since given up on that.

He had bit his lip and hoped that carrying an impossible dream would at least give him the drive he needed to accomplish other important things.

But now she had reappeared before him.

She was once more within arm’s reach.

Now was the time to risk his life.

He would not have another shot at this.

So after sending his irreplaceable students and other acquaintances away, he had searched through his apartment.

He had needed to face his past.

He had needed to face what a foolish, inexperienced, and dazzlingly bright person he had been back then.

This battle was too much to get by using the Fierce Fang air-pressure kunais he had come up with to compensate for his scarred body. But another weapon slept in this room. He had never been able to actually throw it out and had even kept up with its maintenance.

He owned a ninja sword called Salvation & Punishment.

The blade was contained in a black scabbard wrapped over and over in a long, long decorative cloth. The sword was slightly longer than a normal katana and it had no curve.

Including the scabbard, it weighed 8.7kg.

Meanwhile, his upper limit was 10kg. His normal clothing weighed 1kg, so even if he left behind all his other ninja gear, this was cutting it close. In a risky battle when any kind of unexpected thing could happen at any time, a leeway of 300g was simply not enough.

That ninja weapon was only useful when he was planning to only fight a 1-on-1 battle with a specific opponent.

“I know it’s presumptuous of me to ask this of you after so much time.”

He had a self-deprecating smile on his lips.

His fingertips wandered as he nervously reached out.

He had completed the ritual he had tasked himself with.

And he opened his mouth.

“But just once more, will you help me save that girl?”

He grabbed it.

His trembling hand held the symbol of his former glory.

While feeling the weight of Salvation & Punishment like it was the weight of his own life, a single ninja finally set out for the final showdown.

He would reach out to a girl trapped at a dead end, offer her what he had, and give her a different path in life.

That was all he hoped for. As a teacher.

### 6: A Late Night Date with a Wanted Criminal

He had no scientific evidence.

But everything he needed to pursue Sagami Oniyuri was found hidden in the past.

Specifically, in the words they had exchanged during their truly deadly battle based on the odd and inexplicable connection they had developed as not quite enemies and not quite allies.

“I can’t help but be drawn to things that claim to be the ‘most’, the ‘biggest’, or whatever else, no matter how cheap it might sound,” she had once said. “Buildings are especially prone to that kind of language. Japan is crawling with buildings that claim to be the tallest, the biggest, or the most beautiful. Ah ha ha. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve actually snuck into a lot of those at night.”

That told him exactly where to go first. He only had 300g to spare. He had roughly wrapped Salvation & Punishment in a plain colored cloth to carry it around with him, he wore his usual short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, and he covered his mouth with a large scarf while making his way there.

The New Yokohama Aeromonolith.

At 1000m tall, that wide-range broadcast tower covered not just this domain, but all of Kantou. Needless to say, it had recently broken the old record to become “the tallest building”. No matter how isolationist the country tried to be, this island was a fusion of countless cultures and that brought new cultural change.

“…”

Steel beams were complexly arranged to make the structure more solid, the hexagonal exterior was covered in reinforced glass, and the slight opacity of the windows were used to draw various kinds of laser art on the tower. But at 2 in the morning, the shopping mall at the bottom was closed, and the tower’s lights were off. It was wrapped in true darkness, but just as Sugiyado stepped over the thick chain hanging between the metal poles meant to keep cars out, a lovely voice shook his heart.

“Good evening.”

“Oniyuri.”

No one knew how many Hidden Ones the Shogunate had, but two of them were reunited here.

This was not some fancy location. A girl with long black hair stood with her arms behind her back in the center of the ordinary concrete square built in front of a mall. If not for the late hour and the cutting-edge ninja outfit she wore, it might have looked like they were meeting up for a date.

She wore a bodysuit, a white sleeveless kimono top, and a front skirt. That combat equipment used a spiderweb structure and its expansion and contraction was controlled by a processor. The white clothing looked like an ancient queen’s dress or like a surgical gown.

Sagami Oniyuri may not have held a distinction between combat and days off. This may have been the only way she had been taught to approach people.

Who was at fault there?

Was this really something that could be resolved with weapons and armor?

“Um…are you okay now?”

“I am, now that you mention it. Sorry about earlier. When I use my psychic powers, my other senses fade away. It’s kind of like being in a dream.”

Based on that, you might think she was alternating between sane and insane states.

But she was not.

The depths of that girl were deeper than that.

The line she considered sane was already well within the stagnation of madness. There was no essential difference between the two worlds of which she spoke. She might seem calm now, but she was still floating in some psychedelic world only she understood.

He had misread that in the past.

He had assumed his words would reach her when she was relatively stable, so he had attempted to contact her…and it had backfired in the worst way.

Approaching her was not about waiting for the right timing. If you were not prepared to attempt it at her worst, you should never try it at all.

He had to face her madness.

He could not flee from her psychedelic side.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” She looked up at the giant silhouette towering into the night sky. Her long glossy black hair blew in the night breeze. “I want to be free and not be tied down by anyone. That was the only thing on my mind, yet I was still following the usual path I had created for myself. I fit the pattern well enough for you to catch up with me. Almost like I was tying myself down to put my mind at ease.”

“Did you want someone to find you?”

Hearing that, she turned back toward him with the night breeze blowing into the open sides of her top and passing through below her chest.

She looked surprised at first, but then her eyes narrowed gently.

“That sure is a romantic interpretation.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

He scratched the scar on his nose and she let out a soft sigh.

“I don’t think I have it in me to plan out anything like that. I don’t know how you view me, but I’m a lot more aggressive than that. I’m not going to sit around waiting to see what the other person does.”

He heard a sizzling sound like someone had pushed in a car’s cigarette lighter. He heard it from more than one direction. And the number of sounds continue to grow all around the two of them.

Was this a sign of danger?

No. She was her normal self. She was not in a bad mood.

She licked her lips and the wind blew a few strands of hair between her lips as she continued speaking.

The fruit of death began to give off a sweet aroma.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“I’m starting to get bored. Can you show me to somewhere more interesting?”

The darkness was swept away all at once. The concrete ground was now orange and bubbling.

She could control this liquid that was even more dangerous than fire.

It would quickly form a great sea that would sweep everything else away.

That poor girl only knew how to approach people like this, or by mechanically manipulating them through calculated Machiavellianism.

The adults had raised her this way, creating exactly the monster they had wanted. No, since the Tenshukaku had ended up splattered with blood, she may have been an even greater monster than they had wanted. They had created the strongest ninja like they wanted, but now no one could control her. Her designers had misread the situation.

But Sugiyado Souha slowly shook his head in the face of that overwhelming power.

He felt no fear. He only felt sad.

That was why he had chosen to once more face his past defeat.

“And if I refuse?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I don’t know how you view me, but I’m a lot more aggressive than that.”

The boiling lava covered the surface.

She touched her long tongue with her index finger.

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha jumped 10m straight up.

His spine ached.

He only had 300g to spare. Even if it was mostly psychological, he still felt like he was walking on thinner ice than with his usual air-pressure kunais.

(Ow. I really am going to have to use every trick in the book for this one!!)

He removed the thin cloth covering up his sheathed ninja sword, discarded the cloth into the lava, and landed on the railing of the mall’s second story passageway. Sagami Oniyuri laughed when she saw that.

Her switch had been thrown.

She was floating a meter above the lava sea with her legs positioned neatly side by side. She toyed with the stray hairs in her mouth.

“Oh, how lovely.”

She clasped her hands together in front of her face and shifted them to the side, almost like she was begging him for something. She continued smiling throughout.

“So you can do it when you try.”

The scorching lava roared below her as it took in oxygen. He did not hesitate. He immediately turned his back and fled from that girl whose ninja outfit looked like an ancient queen’s dress. The entrance to the mall at the bottom of the tower was of course locked, but he drew Salvation & Punishment, stuck it in the gap between the double doors, and swung it down to slice through the lock itself.

The lava defied gravity to form a rainbow-like arch. The glowing liquid weapon rushed in and filled the open-air passageway. More than that, it melted all the windows and an orange flash flood burst inside, but he had already run up a stopped escalator to escape to the next floor up.

It was not normal to seek out destructive power with a ninja tool.

He had not corrected Ouka with Midnight Tempest because she showed a lot of unique growth in that direction, but that was not how a ninja’s tools were meant to be used. Even the kunais Sugiyado usually used were meant to expand one’s options by digging holes that could not be dug barehanded.

So the same was true of the ninja sword.

His previous leap was something like a pole vault using the compressed air pile driver installed in the sword’s scabbard. It was the same basic idea as Fierce Fang, but the greater size of the scabbard allowed a lot more instant nitrogen foam to be contained within. He could use it multiple times without swapping out cartridges.

In fact, his Fierce Fang was really a downgraded product that borrowed that one portion of his ninja sword. While suffering from his old wounds, he had let go of the sword he had once relied on with his life and instead split its abilities up and carried them around separately.

The sword had a tungsten steel blade because he needed a sharp enough edge to slice through locks and thick chains. It had a few other gimmicks included as well, but they all had their origin in mobility rather than combat.

His immediate defeat against Sagami Oniyuri earlier had been because the air-pressure kunais alone left him with nowhere to stand while the lava sea pushed in, so he had been helpless when the raging sun had burst. But if he had been able to freely move around in that hell, he might have been able to continue fighting.

Showing off obvious firepower was a job for the samurai and knights. A ninja first had to secure their freedom of movement, whether it was on the wall, on the ceiling, on the water, or in the air. They would select the option everyone else had written off as impossible and surpass their opponent’s expectations. That confusion was a ninja’s greatest weapon.

However…

(Gh!?)

The bolts in his spine ached. The springs replacing the ligaments in his legs screamed. The external support surpassed what a normal body could do, so the nonhuman parts within him caused a rejection reaction. He was made all too aware of how little 300g was and he could feel death approaching. This was why he had stopped using this ninja sword specialized for mobility.

That nameless armored samurai had been shocked to find Sugiyado did not use a cutting-edge ninja outfit made with a spiderweb structure, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, and electric potential elastic belt cylinders, but it was quite the opposite. That high-quality equipment had a different weight and output, so he could not use them properly with his injured body. It was about compatibility, not a conviction or stubborn pride.

He had nothing to boast about.

He knew all too well that he was washed up.

He knew he was nothing but baggage who should stick to the logistical support of being an instructor.

(But I will have my way here. Just this once! Just for tonight!!)

“Yes, yes. You really are entertaining.”

After covering the lower floor with boiling lava, Oniyuri floated up along the escalator while smiling. Her flowing black hair and surgical gown of a ninja outfit absorbed the glow of the lava, she embraced her own breathtakingly beautiful body, and she gave off a sweet aroma.

She did not think of this as killing someone.

“I love someone who is not broken by fear. It feels like finally getting to stretch your arms and legs after being stiffly curled up for far too long.”

This was normal for her. It was no different from giving a casual greeting to someone you met on the street. The people who immediately died were like an awkward silence on the elevator and Sugiyado was like someone who would keep the conversation going.

“And I love freedom as well. Oh, how I envy you.”

She stuck out her alluring tongue and another attack manifested from her.

The entire 1000m structure tilted far too easily.

This was what lava was.

It erupted from the depths of the earth and destroyed all structures in its path. It did not matter if that structure was the tallest broadcast tower. Once the ground below it had been melted from a solid into a liquid – from dirt and rock into ultra-hot magma – no structure could remain standing. Not even a feudal lord’s castle.

In another few minutes, the mall, the broadcast facilities, and the upper observation deck would all collapse like a stick stabbed into a pile of sand. When caught in that fall and collapse, no flesh-and-blood human could survive.

But that was fine.

While even the directions of up and down were shaken in the mall, Sugiyado Souha continued ever upwards. He only wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants with no equipment to boost his strength, so he only had that one ninja sword to assist him in running, leaping, and continuing onward.

The entire mall was 5 stories tall. The 6th floor contained the ticket counter for the observation deck. From there, it was a straight shot to the observation deck at 700m using either the elevators or emergency stairs. The remaining height could only be climbed using the work gondolas or open-air stairs only used by workers.

It was like being caught in a never-ending flood. Each consecutive floor of the mall was covered in and consumed by the lava while he climbed over the ticket counter and ran to the emergency stairs.

He had finally left the mall and arrived at the actual broadcast tower.

Beyond the reinforced glass and complex arrangement of steel beams, he climbed further while awash in the light of the moon from above and lava from below. He ran up the emergency stairs that coiled around the central elevator shaft that contained a few different elevators.

There was no sign of Sagami Oniyuri.

But he did not relax. He had not shaken her. He had simply lost sight of her.

The wall right next to him glowed orange.

(The elevator shaft!?)

The wall melted and burst out toward him as a 2000 degree weapon. It truly was like a scorching flash flood. Trying to block that with his sword would have been foolish.

Simply following the stairs up would not be enough anymore, so he twisted around and leaped out onto the complex arrangement of steel beams beyond the railing and just inside the reinforced glass.

He gathered strength using the compressed nitrogen pile driver installed in Salvation & Punishment’s scabbard and flew upwards with his spine protesting.

Once the glowing drops from the melted elevator shaft had settled down, Oniyuri emerged from within.

She looked up at him and spoke in amusement in her ninja outfit that’s bodysuit accentuated her figure and that otherwise looked like an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown.

She licked her lips like she was feasting on the fierce high found in a true fight to the death.

“Oh? You shouldn’t have been able to predict that, so how did detect me through the wall? Hee hee.”

Or was she simply applying that state to her own mind?

In the air, he untied the exceedingly long decorative cloth wrapped around his sword’s scabbard and threw the weighted end toward a steel beam overhead. After confirming it had caught solidly on the beam, he swung like a pendulum and ran along the steel beams near the glass interior wall.

Scorching heat swept through that space.

Oniyuri gathered a ball of lava below her feet with Divine Decree and used its explosive power and the liquid’s jet propulsion to rocket upwards.

A direct hit from this would kill him instantly, but even if he dodged it, the lava being scattered in all directions would be devastating enough.

He desperately moved from the outer steel beams to the emergency stairway railing toward the center and then jumped to a different steel beam, but a sweet voice slipped into his ears along with the wet sound of the saliva on her tongue.

“Hee hee.”

Black-haired Sagami Oniyuri had moved out ahead of Sugiyado after missing him. Her front skirt fluttered as she pointed her slender index finger skywards.

“The sun☆”

The compressed lava burst and flooded the world.

The New Yokohama Aeromonolith was like a giant transparent smokestack that used reinforced glass to cover the entire hexagonal tower built from steel beams.

Boiling lava filled that entire space and gravity pulled it down like a suspended ceiling. It swallowed up and melted everything in its path, including the steel beams and reinforced glass.

“!!”

His soul told him to run – to get as far away as he could. He needed to move down to avoid the deadly lava sealing things off overhead. His short-sleeved dress shirt and pants were no defense against that. A single drop would burn him to the bone.

But he chose to ignore his instincts.

He could not survive if he only ever thought one step ahead. Besides, the ground was already covered in the orange lava.

If he wanted to save her, and if he wanted to seize victory here, he had to continue upwards. He had to face the falling lava!!

“Ohhh!!”

He let out a quick breath.

He twirled around with the tungsten steel ninja sword in hand and intentionally altered his center of gravity to throw his axis off balance and create an irregular rotation.

Steel beams crisscrossed in a complex pattern overhead. Since the melting point of steel was around 1500 degrees, it was no match for the 2000+ degree lava, but it was not liquefied in the blink of an eye. With even a slight moment of resistance, the liquid lava would splash off of it and the suspended ceiling would be torn through. It was a lot like threading a needle, but there were small gaps there.

Those slight safe paths wriggled like amoebas and kept opening and closing.

By slipping through there, he passed through the blazing hot suspended ceiling.

He continued up.

He continued on.

“Ah ha ha! Incredible!!”

When he caught up to her in an instant and began running alongside her as she flew with her psychic Divine Decree, Oniyuri’s face bloomed in a truly unrestrained smile. With a stray stand of hair in her mouth, she licked her lips with her seductive tongue.

She held herself tight in her arms, which seemed to accentuate the chest of her sleeveless kimono top, and she seemed focused on the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

“I see, I see. The pain from the bolts in your spine let you detect the faint magnetism from the moving lava. You transform your risks and weaknesses into weapons and you obtain further freedom from your irremovable restraints. Incredible. Yes, freedom truly is incredible!!”

“…”

Was that how it looked to her?

But the freedom she sought should not have been restricted to this small and bloody world. Why could she not envision a freedom where she could get together with friends for karaoke or look up at a planetarium with a romantic partner? She had forgotten that even she had written it off as impossible and turned her back on that hurdle.

He had to teach her how big the world really was.

He had to correct her so she could stand on her own two feet in that world and reach an understanding with it.

So.

So he could not afford to lose here. No matter what.

More and more steel and concrete melted and lost shape and the resultant liquid was guided by Divine Decree to attack him like a great serpent. The entire broadcast tower groaned ominously and the angle of its tilt grew. The New Yokohama Aeromonolith was not going to last much longer. Sooner or later, it would fall. He knew that, but he still climbed it.

He climbed up, but even that concept was changed little by little as the tower tilted.

His spine ached. The grim reaper was approaching from behind.

Climbing the stairs was not enough. The complex arrangement of steel beams was not all-powerful. He finally set foot on the reinforced glass. It felt like a steep slope, but that was because the vertical glass had tilted enough to stand on. The windows must not have been built to withstand the distortion in the overall structure because more and more cracks formed in them. Once he started stepping on it, it broke and shattered. He could only rely on the slight moment of resistance as it broke, so it was a lot like running on water.

“Ah ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

The pursuing girl’s empty laughter seemed to ring endlessly. The simple act of walking lifted up one’s organs and the shock of taking flight and landing had to be considerable. Her implants should have been replaced since they gradually shifted out of place every time she moved, but they had been left in there, making her life as fragile as glasswork. She wanted to leave the destructive marks of her life on the world in order to celebrate her freedom that could come to an end any minute or any second.

She was strong enough to follow that path wherever it might lead, but also hopelessly and pitiably weak.

She may have been the strongest, but no one would ever follow her. No one would praise her or look up to her.

“What will you do?”

Instead of using the unsteady footing, the psychic girl used Divine Decree to fly around within the tower. Her speed caused her skirt to whip around and she asked a question with a smile.

She almost sounded like someone sad that a fireworks show was ending.

“This game of tag is fun and all, but we’re approaching the end of the course.”

She was right.

The tower was now angled at more than 45 degrees as it leaned out over the city below. He passed through the general observation deck and used a maintenance door to burst outside. The chill of the late-night air hit him while he ran directly along the exposed steel beams.

This was past the point any ordinary visitors would go.

Only the workers were allowed on the giant antenna rod here.

Once he reached the very top, there would be nowhere else to go. Once he had nowhere to run, the rising orange lava would swallow him up.

He was approaching a hopeless precipice.

But he did not hesitate to answer while running alongside her.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Ah ha ha!! Good, it sounds like you’ve got more fun planned for me!!”

The area around him exploded violently, the entire scene melted around him, and the amount of lava rapidly increased. It all moved to attack him.

(I won’t give up on you.)

He clenched his teeth, ignored the pain from his overloaded back and knees, and renewed his resolve.

(Even if every last doctor on the planet throws in the towel and even if every spokesperson of justice in the world condemns you, I will never give up on your future – on your possibility! Oniyuri!!)

The top of the diagonally tilted tower was approaching fast.

Their game of chicken was coming to an end. He could not move past that point.

Yet there was a smile on his lips.

But this smile was very different from hers.

“I was waiting for this.”

“?”

He ran across several parabolic antennae, reached the antenna rod, and came to a complete stop at the very top of that 1000m tower.

While rocketing upwards with the lava’s explosive power, Oniyuri moved to crash into his hips with bone-shattering speed. But he twisted his body to dodge her at the last second.

And after passing him by, the girl dressed like an ancient queen seemed to notice something was wrong. She licked her beautiful lips.

“What…is this?”

Her flight wavered as she started to move past the tower and into the night sky.

Just like a stalling aircraft.

She quickly flailed her arms and legs to regain control and found the top of the tower in front of her again.

That was when she seemed to catch on.

Sugiyado Souha smoothly drew Salvation & Punishment’s uncurved blade. That thick tungsten steel blade was designed to cut wires more than human muscle and bone. The tip reflected the cold moonlight and hot lava glow while pointing calmly at floating Oniyuri.

“I…see. Ah ha ha.”

“To be honest, your flight was a much bigger problem than the more obvious lava. I mean, you can fly from Hokkaido to Okinawa in half an hour with Divine Decree, so you could directly combat a stealth fighter with your psychic powers. The worst case scenario would be if you flew circles at Mach 2 and at an altitude of 10,000m while covering the surface below with lava. If you had gone for that kind of strategic bombing tactics, even I would have been helpless to stop you.”

But she had not done that.

Why not?

“Your flight has its limits.”

“…”

“I don’t know if it’s a physical thing or a mental issue of control, but it works kind of like a hovercraft or ground-effect vehicle. You can pass freely over the ocean or the land, but you can’t fly all that high. Had you never noticed that limit yourself? I’ve never seen you fly more than 5m off of the ground or away from a wall. Not now and not in the past.”

In other words, the pointed end of a tower was the best terrain shape to stop her. She was reliant on the tower, so she could not move beyond a spherical space with a radius of 5m. She could not use her fearsome speed of Mach 2 or 3 to continually fall back while destroying him with lava attacks.

Her position as the strongest had ironically never given her a chance to test the limits of her psychic powers.

What did she feel while facing someone who understood her better than she did?

“Ha ha.”

She formed a truly and hopelessly gentle smile that caught a stray strand of hair while she floated in the night sky.

“Simply incredible. But it’s hard to say you’ve captured me here. I mean, I can move anywhere within 5m of my footing, right? That means I can fly anywhere I want along the 1000m length of the tower.”

“Yes.”

He had thought of that.

So…

“I just have to sever that to fully bind you.”

The battlefield was sliced apart.

The impressive broadcast tower was an enormous mass of steel, but the very top was only a delicate antenna rod. It was only about 50cm thick and it was hollow on the inside, so it was actually thinner than the logs or makiwara he used in training.

It was possible.

He only had to use the tungsten steel ninja sword that had been designed to slice through thick chains and locks like a pair of wire cutters. He only had to convert weight, speed, and a sharp edge into a destructive force.

That allowed him to cut away the very top of that 1000m tower.

“Ah,” said Oniyuri.

She even forgot to smile.

By then, her body had already been dragged away. She could only fly within 5m of solid footing, so if that footing was taken away, she was taken with it.

Of course, Sugiyado was standing on the tip of the tower he had cut away.

Both of them were dumped out into the night sky.

She panicked at having her flight taken from her for the first time, but there was no disturbance at all in his eyes.

This time, the Hidden One faced the other Hidden One.

And the ninja whispered while holding the blade that had once failed to reach her.

“Let’s make this a fair fight, Oniyuri.”

### 7: What I Wanted to Teach You

Oniyuri could do nothing while she fell.

Her freedom of flight had been taken from her. Out in the open air, heating her surroundings with Divine Decree could not create new lava. She may have been able to lift up the existing lava from the ground, but it was too far away to stop Sugiyado Souha as he tried to cross blades with her right this instant.

Nevertheless.

Her wings had been taken from her, but in something like a magic trick, she pulled a standard 30cm dagger from her risqué surgical gown of a ninja outfit. Their weapons clashed a total of 6 times.

She really was a genius and the strongest in everything she did.

“Ha ha.”

She was unable to fight the earth’s gravity and fell toward the carpet of boiling lava below, but she laughed all the while. Her hair whipped around her and she alluringly licked her lips.

“Ah ha ha!! Incredible! Only you could keep up with me like this! Only you could speak with me like this! Yes, yes. I have never felt so fulfilled. It’s fun. So much fun!!”

If not for the speed of her fall, she might have clapped her hands together and held her sides as she laughed.

But Sugiyado Souha was not laughing.

“Hey, Oniyuri,” he said. “A truly happy person has more than just fun and they don’t push away everything else. We can call ourselves happy because we have overcome the hard times by working together with others.”

In that instant, he saw her expression silently but undeniably collapse. She finally had the look of a girl her age. Or so it looked to him.

“That’s more like it.”

She may have already known this.

She may have known it, but she had not had anyone to ask for help and was forced to continue on the only path she had. Because she was the strongest and a genius, turning back may not have been an option for her.

“You look much more human and pretty like that, Oniyuri.”

That was why he felt the way he did.

Yes, she had once slashed him in the back and he still carried the effects of that with him. Yes, she had bitten at the hand held out to help her and cruelly betrayed him. Yes, she possessed a soul that actively chose to trample on her own hope.

But when he had seen the way she lived her life, he had wanted to save her.

He had wanted to tell her she could live her life without following that path that was like walking on broken glass.

That was all he had wanted, and he was dead set on pulling it off.

Strength gathered in the hand holding Salvation & Punishment.

He suppressed the fear of falling into the abyss with her.

And he looked straight at her.

This was not an enemy to defeat. This was not an evil to be slain. She had simply strayed from the path and fallen into the mud without ever being taught how to find her way back.

So.

In that case.

“Isn’t this enough, Oniyuri?”

“Kh.”

“I will teach you everything you should have been taught in the first place! So stop here!! You can’t make any progress without first owning up to what you’ve done wrong!!”

He would catch her.

No matter how many times she fell, he would stay with her until she returned to the path she was originally meant to walk. He would work at it until she could do it.

Seeing her had made him want to be that kind of person.

And that was why he had become an instructor.

So he could not forget that here. No matter how many bolts he had in his spine and no matter what had replaced his torn ligaments, he could not forget that. He could not!!

“Gh!?”

With the seventh slash, her dagger finally came to a stop. His ninja sword had landed a solid blow on it. But that was not his only weapon.

He had the scabbard.

He spun it from his hip to push up the bottom end like a seesaw and it contacted the side of her dagger. The instant nitrogen foam burst out and the fearsome pile driver slammed into the side of the dagger’s blade, shattering it. The hand holding the remaining haft was knocked outwards and the kunoichi’s body arched backwards.

She was entirely defenseless now.

This was his first and last chance to get a unilateral attack in on her.

The boy reversed his ninja sword in front of the unarmed girl.

He would end it with his eighth attack.

He knew exactly what to aim for.

Her form-fitting cutting-edge ninja outfit used a spider web structure and her odd additions to that looked like an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown. That outfit’s defenses could stop a rifle bullet, but he ignored all of that while holding Salvation & Punishment in both hands and stabbing it toward her stomach.

It did not pierce through, but its weight could not be ignored.

This was a mass of well-forged tungsten steel, so the impact it provided had to be greater than a blow from a boxer.

“Oniyuri, this is your first lesson.”

He ignored the pain in his back as he raised his voice.

If he could find victory here, he did not care what happened to his breaking body. Some fights in life were simply that important.

So…

“I will teach you how to lose! And how to accept that defeat!!”

With a great roar of impact, Oniyuri doubled over, her fingertips went limp, and the artificial madness in her eyes faded away.

## Epilogue

At that time, the New Yokohama Aeromonolith had been tilted at more than 45 degrees, but it was still a 1000m tower. When he had cut off the tip of the antenna rod to begin their freefall, they had to have been more than 200m up.

Settling things with Oniyuri was meaningless if the two of them simply plunged into the lava below.

He could not let it end here. He could not free her trapped soul if things did not continue on from here.

If he could not take care of his students, how could he call himself an instructor?

“Kh!!”

He sheathed his ninja sword, stretched out his arms and legs to reduce air resistance, and accelerated in the same way sky divers adjusted their speed. Sagami Oniyuri had been falling ahead of him, so he pulled her limp, unconscious body toward him.

He could ignore her weight since they were falling.

(But this is going to be hell once we decelerate and the weight hits me. This will go well past my back’s 10kg limit!!)

Salvation & Punishment was the only thing he had to rely on.

The tool wrapped around the scabbard was meant to function as a rope, but it was actually a sash-like decorative cloth. It was thin enough to see through to the other side, but it could still gather air.

By folding it back and forth on itself every few meters, he could turn it into a large parachute. It might look like a bunch of bananas since each individual parachute section would be long and narrow, but that did not matter as long as the total area was enough.

His body was suddenly pinned in place.

Oniyuri’s weight assaulted him all at once.

“Ah…kahhh!!!???”

He had broken the rule he had been following all this time.

And he swiftly paid the price.

It felt like sparks were exploding at a point in his spine. His vision really did shatter and he nearly bit his tongue. All of his senses felt vague and unclear, but he still managed to hold tightly onto the girl in his arms. That alone he would not give in on.

They drifted below the broadcast tower leaning out over the city and he desperately tried to catch his breath while his vision refused to fully return.

He could not even focus on his earphone.

He would not let go of that girl no matter what.

He focused only on that while clenching his teeth.

Temporarily losing his vision ended up being painful indeed.

He misread when he would land and misjudged the timing at which he contacted the ground. Parachutes might look like they brought people gently and safely to the ground, but it was not uncommon for soldiers to break an ankle or knee after screwing up the landing.

“Gwah, ahh!?”

Instead of the lava-covered road, he had landed on the roof of some multi-tenant building. The hard landing produced a devastating sound from his legs as the springs replacing the ligaments shattered. He had failed to absorb the shock properly. He could not even stand up anymore and the parachute made from the decorative cloth dragged him to the side as the night wind blew at it.

However.

To the very end, he did not let go of Sagami Oniyuri’s warmth in his arms.

“Vio…Queen Violia.” He finally managed to touch his earphone and get out a scratchy voice while still collapsed on the roof. “Sugiyado Souha to Queen Violia. End radio silence. It’s all over.”

“I don’t know why, but your ninjas and even my John have been making a real fuss over the radio. What in the world happened out there?”

“Ow… I have one thing to ask you in the end here.”

“I’m willing to do anything as long as you stop calling this the end, Nii-sama.”

He heard some static.

He turned his head even though his vision had barely recovered and was still full of noise, but he did manage to see who was waiting there for him.

“John. I’ll admit this was a pure gamble, so I’m glad you were the first to get here.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked the man.

Sugiyado slowly exhaled before answering.

“I want you to look after Oniyuri for me. Her body is the same as it was after those experiments from years ago. She still has the Divine Decree devices needed for her psychic powers. Can you have those surgically removed back in the Kingdom? You only have to use X-rays or ultrasound or whatever to get an image of them, use a 3D printer to create a mockup, and replace them. I know I can’t count on the Shogunate to do this since they would never give up their successful specimen. But you’re different, right?”

“…”

“The parts you will surgically remove are some of the Shogunate’s biggest secrets. If you take away Oniyuri’s psychic powers, you will have eliminated the reason why Queen Violia was targeted back then. Not a bad deal. Right, John? And Your Majesty?”

“You idiot. You didn’t need a word beyond ‘look after her for me’,” spat out the man in a flight suit and leather jacket.

“Hey, are you sure you only want us to look after Oniyuri?” asked the queen on his earphone. “Two is no more difficult than one, so we could take you too.”

“That would be great.” He smiled while still collapsed on the roof. “But then I couldn’t end this properly. If no one is around to take the blame for all of this, someone else will be placed on the chopping block as a scapegoat. Most likely Guren and Suiren. This incident was all about our past, so I can’t let anything happen to those girls over this.”

“You mean?”

“Yes, it’s the only option.”

Sugiyado Souha was unable to get up, so John crouched down and gently lifted Sagami Oniyuri from his arms. The man still had one arm in a sling, but he did not let any pain show on his face.

“Can I count on you?”

“Of course you can,” spat out John while turning around, but Sugiyado could not even watch him go.

The next footsteps were already approaching.

He heard two sets walking in perfect unison, so he slowly raised his hands.

“I surrender.”

He knew what he had to say.

“I threatened my students into doing what I wanted so I could restore my honor!! They were in a state of diminished capacity and cannot be held accountable for what they did!!”

“Do you honestly think anyone will buy that ridiculous excuse?”

“Whatever your reasons were, we all know you wanted to end this as quickly as possible and even risked your life to do so.”

He was glad to hear them say that.

But he could not agree. Oniyuri had escaped and the four primary criminals had not been captured. Meanwhile, the Shogunate had taken considerable damage. The only way to pacify the Shogunate was to hand them a ringleader who had been pulling all the strings behind the scenes of everything caused by Ouka’s group and by Oniyuri.

Someone had to be thrown in jail. Even before Oniyuri’s involvement, Sugiyado had known it could only end like this.

Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

Shirazaya Guren and Shirazaya Suiren.

He had only ever been focused on protecting every last one of them and not letting any one of them die.

Guren’s throat trembled and Suiren restlessly toyed with her right earlobe.

“An unreasonable conclusion will only draw those girls to a new battlefield,” said one. “Just like that past mission led to the current fight.”

“Distortions will only lead to misfortune and tragedy,” said the other. “Even if that decision appears to be the cleverest one to you.”

“That’s fine,” he said.

He did not lower his arms while still lying limply on the roof. His legs had been shattered, but he did not use his hands to support his weight. He had already decided those hands would stay up until the twins with red and white extensions to their blonde hair had handcuffed him.

“They should understand now that even their seemingly flawless Elite Ninja skills can be defeated. And with me in prison, the techniques I used could be passed on to the Shogunate. And thus to the Shogunate spies like you. They won’t be able to put together another criminal plot so easily.”

“That is not what we meant.”

“We do not approve of what they did, but do you really think they will be satisfied with this result? We all know they won’t.”

“Of course they won’t,” he spat out. “After everything they did, how could they ever conveniently get off scot-free, without losing anything? I am on their side 100%, but not even I am going to spoil them that much. The thing they most wanted to protect will be taken from them and thrown in prison because of their actions. …And they should count themselves very lucky that is all they lose. That trauma should be enough to ensure they never again use their ninja techniques for their own personal desires.”

“…”

Shirazaya Guren and Suiren fell silent for a while. Their reluctance to accept this was written plainly on their faces. He could tell they really were good girls. But he was not budging on this. He would have his way here.

He smiled thinly with his legs shattered and his hands raised.

“Please.”

“But…”

“Please. This will help you save face too. There is no other way to save everyone but me.”

“No one ever asked you to save them!!”

Come to think of it, that was true.

These twin sisters had not.

His four students had not.

Even Sagami Oniyuri had not.

They had all clenched their teeth, suppressed their tears, and fought against the cruel reality facing them.

They were all such strong girls. In a way, his half-assed meddling had condescendingly sullied their dignity and pride.

But there was no turning back now.

“Then I’ll have to ask it myself.”

This time – this one time – he would have his way no matter what.

“Guren, Suiren. Please help this frail and broken ninja. You’re the only people I can rely on in that hellhole we call the Shogunate.”

Silence followed.

The blonde twins tried to say something, but no words came out. They squeezed the white cloth of their slitted skirts as their hesitation continued without end.

But in the end, they were indeed strong.

“Sugiyado Souha.”

He heard a solid metallic sound. Guren, with the red extension to her blonde hair, had pulled a pair of handcuffs from her ninja outfit.

“On charges of inciting a largescale disturbance, providing false testimony, obstructing an official investigation, inciting a foreign threat by working with the Kingdom, hiding a crucial witness, and assisting her flight from the country…”

Her words faltered at that point. No, she had bit her adorable lip.

Suiren placed a hand on her shoulder, but Guren managed to get the words out of her trembling throat.

She renewed her resolve and finished her statement.

“You are under arrest.”

## Afterword

Welcome, everyone. This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Ninjas! I have actually included them on occasion in A Certain Magical Index and the Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village that I wrote for another publisher. If you read Index’s SS2 in particular, you should be able to grasp my image of fictional ninjas.

Since I was writing about ninjas, I placed the main focus squarely on the desire to protect the heroine students while making everything else be a series of deceptions. That is different from a police story where you can focus on solving the case once all the surrounding information has been established. I just hope it was enjoyable enough to create a solid foundation for doing what I wanted to do.

The protagonist possessed a great power but was too kind to soak himself in the darkness and lost everything as a result. He can tell standing back up is only going to cause him to crash and burn like he once did, but he still struggles to save those girls regardless of what side they belong to. I hope you enjoyed it.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Tajima Ryuushi-san, to my editors Miki-san, Nakajima-san, Yamamoto-san, and Mitera-san, and to someone deserving special thanks. Giving them all unique kunoichi outfits instead of a standardized school uniform may have been a cruel request that emptied out the drawer of ideas all at once, so I am truly grateful you went along with it.

And I give my thanks to the readers. I love using this genre for minor characters, but I was honestly pretty nervous about using it as a main theme. I have nothing but thanks for all of you who still picked up this book. Thank you very much.

And I will end this here.

You’ve gotta go with kunais over shurikens, right!?

-Kamachi Kazuma

## Beyond the Epilogue

It was a dark night.

On the surface, countless lights gathered together to create the vast nightscape of a city, but the rooftops of the skyscrapers were actually wrapped in deep shadows.

“What should we do, Ouka? If the records from that farce of a private trial are accurate, he’s probably being sent to Abashiri, which is practically a legend at this point. This will be our last definite shot at this.”

“I would love to,” said the twintail girl. “But Sensei wouldn’t want that.”

After everything they had experienced, that was the only thing they had learned.

But if they had learned that tiny lesson beforehand, they never would have caused that major incident in the first place.

Their teacher, Sugiyado Souha, had risked his life and his reputation to teach them that. He had remained their teacher to the end.

So they could never forget it.

An instructor’s true value was determined by the path their students took, so they would not make that mistake again.

So.

A defenseless prisoner transport truck and its escort vehicles passed by below them. They could have attacked that puny assortment of vehicles a hundred times and never failed even once.

“But this isn’t the end,” said silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki while watching the vehicles drive away. “He might be in prison now, but once the Shogunate needs help, they will come to him, bow their heads, and beg him to solve whatever problem they’re having.”

Countless incidents of varying severity were occurring all over the country even now. Friction with foreign nations continued to grow, so no one could predict when some accident would lead to a true war.

While those four had left the Shogunate, they had been Elite Ninjas at the top of the Shogunate’s spy ranking system. They had seen a lot of classified information. They knew all too well that a precarious balancing act was underway to prevent the country from falling apart on its own.

So.

Shizukuma Asagao, the youngest, spoke last, in what almost sounded like a prophecy.

“The time will come when Sensei is needed once more. And it will arrive sooner than anyone expects.”

Inside the thick prisoner transport truck, the twin sisters were working as guards.

“Is there anything you need?”

“We will make as many concessions as we can, so just tell us what you want.”

They used soft, blunted voices that were not at all what a Shogunate spy would normally use when speaking to a violent criminal. The ordinary prison guards gave them quizzical looks, but the twins in white dresses paid them no heed.

Meanwhile, the boy smiled thinly with handcuffs on his wrists, his legs in casts, his back leaning against the wall, and his butt on the floor.

One of the twins wrapped her hands around his restrained ones.

He felt a solid object there. It may have been a small metal clip.

But he shook his head.

He could escape if he put his mind to it, but that would be meaningless.

His position seated on the floor must have been more comfortable for him than in a chair. His shoulders relaxed while he responded in that space surrounded by metal bars.

“In that case, could you bring me some Happy Churn? I’ll take as many of them as I can get.”

- ↑ Asagao is the Japanese name of the morning glory flower.

### 002. Prologue

Now.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “ninja”?

Maybe you are picturing shuriken, kunai, smoke bombs, and cloths made to blend in with the wall. You might even imagine someone clasping their hands in front of their chest and reciting some strange incantation.

But none of that is accurate.

A ninja has electronically-controlled multipurpose goggles and an outfit made from bulletproof and bladeproof spiderweb fibers, chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel or electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders.

That was considered the bare minimum these days.

In the abandoned B3 underground plaza of a large train station, Sugiyado Souha, a 17-year-old boy with a scar on his face, was crouched down while holding a metal cylinder the size of a large water bottle with lots of holes in the side. He wore a half-sleeved dress shirt, loose pants, and a large scarf. It was all old and worn out.

The boy was facing two fighting groups of kunoichis.

On one side was Kuhou Ouka. She was a girl of 13 or 14 with her long chestnut hair worn in twintails. She wore a special fiber outfit that fit snugly to her young bodylines and she held a hunting gun with two stacked barrels, a bayonet, and a multipurpose sight that resembled binoculars.

On the other side was Shirazaya Guren and Suiren. Those identical girls of 16 or 17 had semi-long blonde hair. They could only be distinguished by the white or red extensions attached next to one of their ears and by the flower decorations in their hair. The two slender girls each held a special-steel ninja sword and a kusarigama.

They both wore skintight full-body suits with kimono-like attachments worn on top to hide what would otherwise show through. They way the fluttering cloth drew the eye every time they moved may have been one of the weapons long used by the female ninjas known as kunoichis.

“…”

None of them needed to say anything at this point.

Without any signal, all three girls moved in perfect unison, as if they had stolen each other’s thoughts. With their very first step, they kicked off the ground, flew through the air, and kicked off the station’s pillars and walls to flip around.

Each time Ouka swung her bayonet, liquid nitrogen or flamethrower blades would fly out as if to slice across the entire plaza, but the twins Guren and Suiren still pressed closer with their sleeveless white kimono tops and short pleated skirts giving them a cheerleader-like silhouette. The flashy and astonishing attack was a bluff. The stacked-barrel hunting gun could select between types of ammo, so the twins used their special-steel blades to accurately cut down the bullets meant to actually hit them. Their point-blank range exchanges continued from there. Both sides were only young girls.

Their spiderweb ninja suits were several dozen times as strong as steel, but a direct hit from one of those killing moves could still slice their slender bodies in two. After all, they had trained their bodies, chosen their equipment, and come here for that purpose.

Sugiyado could not stand it any longer, so he shouted to them.

“Stop this! Keep this up and you’ll die!!”

Both sides briefly came to a stop.

No, for a brief moment, Kuhou Ouka and Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s killer intent was diverted elsewhere.

“Who do you think we’re doing this for in the first place!?” shouted those cutting-edge kunoichis. “And whose side are you on anyway!!!???”

Ugh, thought Sugiyado Souha while looking up toward the sky.

He lamented to himself while confirming the sensation of the sealed poison gas container in his hands.

How did I find myself in this mess?

It all began just a few days earlier.

### 003. Chapter 1

### 1: A Kunoichi, Twintails, and a Lecture

The rectangular plastic package was just a little larger than the postcards that seemed so nostalgic nowadays. It was colored a reddish orange and the thick text on the front said “Happy Churn”.

Sugiyado Souha, a 17-year-old boy with a scar on his nose, was seated in one corner of a small single-room apartment. He was gesturing wildly as he desperately tried to argue his case. He wore a half-sleeve dress shirt, loose pants, and (even indoors) a long scarf around his neck, but it was all very uncomfortable after absorbing so much nervous sweat.

He was speaking to a twintail girl standing past the Happy Churn box with her hands on her slender hips. She wore a baggy long-sleeved white sweater and a miniskirt adorned with pink pleats. It was certainly a cute outfit, but if she moved any closer, he was pretty sure he would be able to see the cute underwear within that miniskirt. And do not ask how he could know it was cute without having actually seen it. You are reading too much into this. He definitely had not seen it and he double definitely had not seen the small ribbon on the front!!

“No, wait, Ouka. There is a perfectly good reason for this.”

“Your room is already so messy it’s a miracle you haven’t gotten yourself sick, so you have to stop sneaking this junk food, Sensei!!”

“Junk!? You take that back!! Happy Churn is my manly soul food!”

“Oh, the very thought of it scares me. Sugar, carbs, chemical seasonings, artificial preservatives, and artificial coloring. Snack foods are an incarnation of evil intent on destroying the world, so I will be throwing out every last crumb! Even if it will probably all be back in a few days knowing you!!”

“Not so fast! Happy Churn powder is a mystery seasoning with a secret recipe, so you have no basis for your critique, Ouka!!”

“Please don’t eat mystery substances full of who-knows-what, Sensei!!”

“Oh, no. At this rate, cute Ouka could turn into a truly monstrous woman as she ages. Any course corrections need to be made now. Strike while the iron is hot, as the saying goes. You can do it, 14 year old! You have time to fix this!!”

“You were the one that told me to watch out for sugars and fats because a kunoichi’s body is a crucial asset.”

He was simply reaping what he had sown.

Sugiyado dripped with an unpleasant sweat and turned his head like a broken fan to avoid looking her in the eye.

“I-I’m a guy, so I’m not a kunoichi?”

“Shall I carve that into your grave, Sensei? (Smile)”

“No, no, no! But if I’m being entirely serious, things are different between a retired instructor like me and someone like you who is still sent to the front lines to battle the knights and musketeers who arrive by sea and air.”

“Sensei!!”

“You have every right to be angry, but that is a historical fact. I already put in the work, so let me pack on a few kilos now.”

“I…” Ouka kept her hands on her hips but also pouted her lips like a disobedient child. “I refuse to accept that you have retired. I mean, no one can defeat you, not even Bara or Hoozuki. And that includes me.”

“I am honored that a Shogunate-approved Elite Ninja thinks so highly of me.”

“…”

Ninja techniques might seem old and busted.

But the arresting techniques and martial arts adopted by the police and militaries of different countries were generally based on the ancient and traditional martial arts of that country or region. In Eastern Europe, that meant wrestling. In Western Europe, that meant mixed martial arts with an emphasis on grabbing and pinning techniques. In South America, that meant an alternate version of jujutsu. In China…well, that one goes without saying.

The modern reliance on ninjas was a sign of the times. Foreign warships and aircraft carriers were stationed uncomfortably close to the isolationist Shogunate and the mechanical knights and musketeers aboard those ships only had to be sent the go sign. Those things could not be dealt with by traditional means, so new tactics had to be built from the ground up and that required individual fighters to adjust their own tactics on the fly. While karate, judo, and kendo received more attention, the necessities of the modern age had led to a resurgence in a different but equally ancient form of martial arts.

Even if they were reliant on modern technology, their techniques were still built on a foundation of martial arts to bring about a bizarre evolution in the traditional methods. This evolution that had developed to combat cutting-edge foreign weapons was known as Strategic Martial Arts.

“But you must understand that you are only talking about direct sparring matches fought on the limited field of a training ground and with a time limit. That has no bearing on what would happen in a real battle.”

Sugiyado remained seated on the floor and winked while tapping his fist on his lower back like an old man.

“I have three bolts in my spine and springs to make up for the torn ligaments in my legs. I’m far from helpless, but my spine feels funny when I lift something weighing 5kg and it explodes with pain when I lift something weighing 10kg.”

Of course, if that was really true, his spine would explode from the inertia of high-speed movement or when he blocked an enemy’s blade, yet that did not happen.

In the end, it was a complicated mix of his old wounds and psychological symptoms.

Knowing it was only in his head made his inability to get over it all the more frustrating. Any doctor he asked would likely tell him it was not that simple, but that would not be enough to fix his stubborn pride.

“You want to know how to defeat me? It’s simple. Make constant attacks with projectiles while endlessly falling back on a wide-open field. As long as you aren’t relying on thick and heavy bulletproof equipment, that will be enough to wear me down and kill me. I can’t dodge things forever, so my focus would falter at some point.”

“That’s nonsense and you know it, Sensei. We’re Elite Ninjas ranked above the standard High, Middle, and Low hierarchy, but you’re one of the Hidden Ones ranked even higher than that. No one even knows how many of those there are!!”

“Ouka, we are not samurais or the Shogun. What is victory for a ninja?”

“Kh.”

“What is victory for a ninja, Ouka?”

“To use every means available and follow any path available to achieve your objective no matter what. To swiftly and surely create a foothold for the rest of the army to advance without getting bogged down in matters of personal glory.”

She looked like she was silently cursing herself for being able to rattle off that definition.

Sugiyado Souha smiled bitterly at how good a student Kuhou Ouka was.

“Real battles are cruel and you don’t get to complain that something ‘isn’t fair’. If you’re carrying a bombshell, of course someone is going to poke at it. So if you carry a bombshell that could ruin the entire army’s timetable, you will be kept away from the battlefield. It is a perfectly sensible decision.”

He slowly exhaled and stood up while she bit her cute lip and said nothing in response. He was glad she was so worried about him, but this was his life and she did not have to carry these problems for him.

He placed a hand on her small head and smiled.

“Don’t let something so insignificant shake you, Ouka.”

“How is this insignificant, you dummy?”

“Even when you don’t think it’s affecting you, the enemy might sniff out the feelings lingering in your heart. You can never predict what will be the dividing line between life and death. If you don’t want to be forced into retirement by some unexpected turn of events like I was, then you need to stay strong.”

Those words were entirely meant for the girl named Ouka, but that also meant they contained no comfort at all for Sugiyado himself.

“But that’s what makes it all the more frustrating, Sensei.”

“That part is an entirely psychological issue, so you have to overcome it on your own.”

He sighed and lifted his hand from her head. The short girl looked over somewhat regretfully, but he was not the type to be drawn in by his excellent student’s sex appeal (although in her case, it was more of a protective desire). He turned his back on her and waved as he left the room.

For a while, the twintail girl clasped her hands in front of the flat chest showing through her tight sweater as she stared at the door Sugiyado Souha had left through, but then…

“Ah!? I was supposed to be lecturing him, but he somehow twisted it around into a quiet goodbye! Sensei!!”

### 2: The Floating City of the Shogunate and a Daimyo Procession

Your efforts are undeniable.

We have confirmed the extreme chaos on the scene at the time.

But the fact remains that your injuries prevent you from carrying an injured comrade. No matter how skilled they might be, someone who cannot protect the lives of their comrades in arms cannot be placed on the front line.

Please understand.

“…”

Ouka was one of the Elite Ninjas considered the strongest in active duty, so she would find him immediately if all he did was leave the apartment. He alternated travel routes in a complex pattern to eliminate any trail to follow and blended into the crowds of people.

(Really, this is like a pleasant stroll for me.)

This much exercise was not going to detonate the bombshell in his back. Theoretically, anyway. But while carrying a bombshell like that, he ended up worrying about it even when he should not have to.

He was weak.

He did not avoid admitting to himself he had a handicap. He could not rid himself of his concerns, unease, and even fears when doing something as simple as this. No matter how jokey he might seem on the surface, this was something he could not let his students learn about. He knew it was pathetic keeping secrets from those so close to him, but even instructors had their pride and dignity they wanted to protect.

He had left to escape Ouka’s lecture, which meant he did not have a set destination in mind. So how was he to kill some time? He might b a ninja, but he did not perform any flashy backflips or create clones of himself. He waited at the light for the large pedestrian scramble like anyone else would and he lost himself in thought while watching a line of vehicles cross by in front of him.

However, these were not ordinary cars or trucks.

Two large white police motorcycles took the lead, various bodyguard and escort vehicles were next, and a black luxury car bearing the large family crest of a samurai family followed that.

The police motorcycles were blasting an announcement from their speakers while driving quite slowly (which had to be difficult with motorcycles).

“A special alert is in effect. We know this is an inconvenience to you all, but please do your part to facilitate our official business.”

This was known as a Daimyo Procession.

The term Sankin Kotai was no longer even used these days, but not because the mandatory policy no longer existed. It was just that no one considered it worth arguing about any longer. Modern meetings could be held remotely with a single internet line, but the Shogunate still insisted on direct meetings on the pretext of safety. And of course, the funding for such meetings came from the annual taxes paid by the people living in the New Yokohama Domain.

There must have been some frustrations because people had stopped bowing their heads when they encountered a Daimyo Procession of late. Some young men in the area were aiming their phone cameras toward it and a small girl was eating a corndog while holding her mother’s hand, but none of the bodyguards got after them.

However, there must have been a coordination mistake this time.

The large monitor covering a department store wall was brightly and loudly spreading a wide range of information unrelated to the Daimyo Procession.

“New Yokohama Domain, the reclaimed land known as the modern Dejima, is a unique intersection point with many foreign cultures within this country’s isolationist policies, so it is also a land of many strange gourmet surprises! For example, here we have yaki udon and a pilaf sharing the same plate with a line of shumai running down the center to divide the two.”

“The age of a single OS’s monopoly has come to an end. We in the Kyushu University Computer Machinery Alliance have brought together domestic hardware with a brand new operating system that is estimated will increase the GDP by…”

“Breaking news: Several ships have been detected in the ocean off of the Pacific coast. They appear to be carrying Kingdom knights who plot to steal our data, but the unusually great number of aircraft carriers has led the Shogunate to announce…”

“Happy Churn!! X Day draws nigh! Strap your helmets on tight, everyone!!”

(The world is sounding as dangerous as ever. And what was that about everyone’s beloved Happy Churn?)

Sugiyado Souha prepared to take a mental note about the one topic he could not afford to miss out on, but then the screen switched over.

“In response to the dangerous signs at air and sea, the Tenshukaku at the center of the Shogunate is preparing a conference attended by all Daimyo with more than 500,000 koku of land as they will be the foundation of any regional defense. With the outstanding skill of the great 52nd Shogun Osaie at work…”

High officials in their formal dress were lined up in a large hall where a single tatami mat probably cost as much as a commoner’s entire house.

And in the very, very back sat a single figure.

The Daimyo Procession must have cost a fortune, but it paled in comparison to this.

Sugiyado Souha gave a look of pity toward the family crest on the luxury car, but he was still mostly thinking of Happy Churn. And then a bewitching voice reached his ears.

“Oh, dear. If it isn’t, Sensei. If you make Ouka wait too long, you will lose your chance to apologize, you know?”

A floral scent wafted over to him.

She was tall for a girl but still shorter than Sugiyado. This was a sexy girl with long red hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls and a dress so bold a red it almost looked dyed in blood. The buns on either side of her head may have been a floral symbol. She did wear a kanzashi, but she still had a mostly Western appearance. She looked splendid enough to make an appearance at an evening party or on a theatre stage.

The fact that someone like this had blended into the background until now was all you needed to know to see her great skill.

“Oh, Bara.”

Sugiyado whispered without moving his lips and without looking back. He kept his eyes on the opposite red light and the luxury cars of the Daimyo Procession.

When he carefully studied the reflection in the highly-polished cars, he could indeed see the beautiful kunoichi standing behind him.

“You’re getting better. I thought I had hidden my presence better than this.”

She was 18 which meant she was older than him, but he still ended up speaking like her superior.

But the red ringlet curls girl did not seem to mind.

“Only because my specialty is in disguises and deception instead of direct combat. Knowing how to disguise myself means knowing how to see through other people’s disguises.” That star of the stage giggled while crossing her arms in a way that lifted her large breasts up from below. “Plus, these techniques are all things you taught me.”

“You have already made them into your own techniques. I have nothing left to teach you there.” He relaxed his shoulders. “So where are Hoozuki and Asagao?”

“They went shopping to buy some ingredients for tonight.”

“Hm? Hold on. What are you four starting now?”

Something seemed to dawn on him after he asked that. This explained why Ouka was so upset about him eating snacks. The problem was not with the Happy Churn itself; she had been behaving like a mother refusing to let her child snack before dinner.

“Forgive her, Happy Churn. My student lashed out at you unfairly, but I know you have a big enough heart to laugh it off like an adult for my sake.”

“I’m pretty sure Ouka’s problem is that she likes you so much she’ll even get jealous over your fondness for an inanimate object.”

“But this is a problem. I was thinking of killing some time at a family restaurant or burger shop since I have nowhere to go.”

“That would only add fuel to the fire, but I won’t stop you if you are the kind of ‘expert’ who enjoys seeing a cute girl erupt at you.”

“What do you even want from me?”

“Oh? I like you a lot too, Sensei.”

She dropped a bombshell with a straight face. They were student and instructor and he wanted to complain about the kids these days, but Bara gave a mischievous smile and toyed with one of her ringlet curls using nail-polished fingertips. That was enough to squish her large breasts together from the side with her arm, so he really, really wanted to complain about the kids these days.

Kunoichis were taught to distract their opponents with their bodies, but the scent of nectar coming from Hanasawa Bara was especially strong. If she transferred in, she could probably bring down an entire prestigious girl’s school on her own.

“Now, Ouka’s ‘like’ is a much narrower kind of thing, but mine is much broader. I absolutely love the general atmosphere when you, Ouka, Hoozuki, Asagao, and I are together.”

“But…just to be clear, isn’t that atmosphere in trouble? If Ouka erupts, won’t that beloved peace of yours crumble away?”

“My, my. Who ever said the atmosphere I like is a peaceful one?”

That was the end of it.

The parade-like Daimyo Procession finally left. The pedestrian light turned green and the waiting people began to move. That girl in a bright red dress had been by his side a moment before, but now she was gone.

However, he did hear a giggling breath. Just as he realized she was still close by, he felt a soft touch on his cheek.

It was a maiden’s lips.

Only a thick floral scent reminiscent of a red rose’s petals remained in his nose.

“So if necessary, I am willing to throw in some sparks or add fuel to the fire. Just like this.”

Now she really was gone.

He shook his head side to side and then started across the pedestrian scramble a little later than the others waiting.

### 3: Fierce Fang

(I should probably see how my shoulder is doing while I’m at it.)

With that thought, Sugiyado Souha decided on a destination. He chose a place with very few visitors even in the shopping district. That was hardly surprising when it was a parking garage that had been waiting in vain to be demolished for quite a while.

There were no official dojos or training organizations for ninjas like there were for samurai sword fighting. Ninjas had to construct their own training grounds to train their own bodies and minds and to keep themselves honed so they would not forget what they had already learned. Of course, using private property would mean leaving your real name in the official registries and they could not exactly put out a big sign saying “Ninja Village”, so they generally borrowed other people’s land. But if they sensed anyone approaching, they had to remove every trace of their presence before they were found and then search out a new location.

A ninja’s agility was their selling point.

Unlike the samurai or warrior monks, they worked best when they were free to move without any restrictions.

In order to keep their decisions sharp when it really mattered, it did not hurt to continue training on a daily basis.

This (abandoned?) parking garage was not interesting enough to become a hangout for local delinquents and it did not have any stories creepy enough for people to visit for a test of courage, so it was perfect for his needs. He had been using it for nearly a month now.

But that was not necessarily a good thing.

(If I stay too long, I end up gathering too much stuff. I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me when I do need to withdraw.)

“Now, then.”

He had passed a thick rope through one of the old tires he had found somewhere and stacked up in here and had it hanging from one of the pipes overhead. Even without giving it a push like a pendulum, the irregular vibrations from the trains running nearby made it shake in unpredictable patterns.

(20, 30, no, I need to reach 35 for a passing grade with a straight line shot.)

He measured the distance with his steps and then faced his target from a distance.

35 meters.

A handgun bullet could fly a distance of around 180 meters, but opinions were still divided on the range at which it could actually hit a target or kill a fleeing opponent. Some said 30 meters and others insisted it was less than 8 meters.

During an indoor battle with lots of cover, a range of 35 meters was so-so.

He did not time the shot himself. Ninja battles were not like samurai duels, so he used the noise from outside the parking garage as a cue.

(Yes, I can use the squealing of a car’s tires for today.)

Once he had defined his terms, it was time to wait. It might come one second later, or he might have to wait an hour. It was also possible he could wait all day and never hear it at all, but he could not let that distract him. Ninjas would perform sniping and assassinations, so it was crucial that they performed all their tasks with equal proficiency at all times. If nothing happening was enough to get you down, you could never survive a life of lying next to a sniper rifle on a mission that only ended when further orders came in.

Do not let success or failure affect your state of mind, he silently told himself. It was not uncommon to only have a 2 second opportunity during a mission that lasted 96 hours. But if you could not produce your best possible performance during those 2 seconds-

Squeal!!

Whether someone had slammed on the brakes or the gas, the squealing of tires cut off his thoughts. His arms rose seemingly all on their own and moved to his lower back. He pulled two kunai from below his half-sleeve dress shirt. He crossed his arms to throw both kunai without a moment’s delay.

Even the rustling of his clothing seemed delayed.

Unlike stick shuriken, kunai were not thrown with the vertical rotation seen in throwing axes. The broad shape of the blade itself sliced through the air like wings to provide lift and stabilize its flight. Instead of throwing them with the arm like in darts, the entire body was used as a spring to place your full body weight on the end of your hand, so it was more like throwing a solid paper airplane than throwing a blade or ball.

Sugiyado Souha’s mind was entirely focused in that moment.

A nearby train shook the tire dangling from the rope, but that did not matter. His side-throw was perfectly accurate. It felt like he was watching the kunai follow a line already drawn out in the air. Missing would have been the real shock here. The old tire was drowning in an ocean of equations that would have the average mathematician struggling in front of a whiteboard, but the two kunai flew right into it.

But that was all they did.

“…”

It appeared to have been the thick low-pressure tire for a large truck, but his kunai caught on the edge more than stab in. It was much harder than a sandbag, but this still meant the kunai were hopelessly deficient in penetrative power. They could never finish off a ninja wearing thick bulletproof equipment. In fact, the average boy in a T-shirt and shorts would walk away alive.

“What am I doing, dammit?”

As much as he claimed he wanted to live an easier life now, he could not forget the feeling of the ninja gear in his hands and he kept practicing with it day in and day out. Or rather, he feared he was continuing to grow weaker after already deteriorating quite a bit. He could not relax unless he made sure he still had what it took. And that bad habit was only getting worse.

Also, he had not moved a step.

When a frontline ninja decided they would defeat an opponent, they would do so with the very first attack. Because that was safest. Yet now he could not even take out an old tire swaying irregularly from the roof. The world had grown awfully cruel of late.

“Cruel…”

Was he referring to the three bolts in his spine? Or to the skills that he used to take for granted that were slipping from his grasp? Either way, his complaint was misguided. Who did he have but himself to blame for the decline in his skill? Also, complaints held no power on the front line. Those battles were fought based on the assumption that your name would not go down in history. Outsiders had no chance to decide what was right or wrong and the losers were left behind as nothing but corpses.

If you could not keep up, you had to step aside.

If you were even one step short, you were still too slow to survive.

That was probably why he had trained those girls. He had lost his wings and could no longer fly, but he still selfishly sought a place for himself in the great expanse of the sky.

“Goddammit,” he quietly cursed while looking away from the old tire pendulum that displayed the miserable result of his efforts.

But a moment later, there was a loud pop.

That loathsome donut-like silhouette was shredded from within and blown away.

Would anyone who saw that have realized what just happened?

Sugiyado had thrown kunai at it. They were alloy ninja gear made by sharpening one-handed gardening trowels. However, the two things that fell to the concrete floor were both shaped differently. The silver blades had a groove along the central line that opened up in parallel lines to the left and right like a U-shaped tuning fork.

These were special weapons that’s blade included a rescue device used to force open car doors and that’s grip included a nitrogen rapid-foaming agent used in airbags. It could provide a maximum pressure of approximately 15 tons. If the very tip managed to work its way into a gap in the target, it could even break the lock of a tank’s hatch and force it open.

So in an urban warfare environment where he had plenty of cover he could use to approach, this allowed him to single-handedly defeat a unit of tanks.

And ninjas never looked for fairness in their battles, so they would lure the target into the perfect environment beforehand.

It went without saying what happened when you stabbed one of those into a personal bulletproof jacket or into actual flesh and blood.

These were Sugiyado Souha’s true fangs.

These were the Fierce Fang air pressure kunai.

They did not require weight or speed to destroy a target. As long as he could throw the tip into the gaps or joints of the target’s armor, the deadly equipment would be shredded from within. That meant he needed accuracy and nothing else. That old wolf had received critical injuries to his spine and the ligaments of his legs, but this was his last resort for staying relevant that he had found after struggling and crawling through the mud for so long. Of course, these were not in general(?) use for the simple reason that they were of own his handmade design and he had not shared the plans.

“…”

He slowly walked over and reached into the shredded tires to collect the two Fierce Fangs that had their beaks open in parallel, but then he sighed.

“I am no longer worthy of the Hidden One title.”

Only bitterness colored his face.

“These are like training wheels on a bike. No, they’re like adult diapers, dammit!!”

### 4: Ninja Teacher

Sugiyado Souha still had a lot of time to kill.

The unexpectedly slow passage of time hinted at something quite bitter rising up within him.

He was afraid to head back to the apartment where Ouka awaited him (even though it was his apartment). Since snacks were apparently not allowed, he visited an internet café inside an ordinary multi-tenant building. Due to the aforementioned prohibition on snacks, he did not take a bite or sip of the complimentary curry and drinks.

“Call it a rebellion against capitalism.”

Despite the country’s isolationist policies, New Yokohama Domain was treated similarly to Dejima, so the internet there had access to the outside world. In that sense, these cramped spaces separated out by partitions were a luxury item. You could connect to the national internet with your phone, but one of these desktops with a static IP linked to New Yokohama Domain land provided a lot more freedom.

A glance at the browser’s home page showed the same online news headlines he had seen on the street earlier and a few eye-catching ads.

“Sword training available in vibration, water pressure, blowtorch, and other varieties.”

“If you want to be a cyber professional, look no further!”

“Unlike in the samurai families, bloodline is irrelevant in the merchant families. Seeking people interested in immediate lessons on advanced economics!!”

The internet moved at such a rapid pace the word “inundated” seemed apt. That had greatly changed how education worked. Old-fashioned schools were used to provide a foundational education and foster communication skills, but that was not enough to get by in the modern age. Even if you graduated from elementary school, middle school, high school, university, and even graduate school, you still needed an edge if you wanted to receive a job offer.

So in parallel to ordinary schooling, students would carve open a future for themselves by learning some kind of specialized skill. Some self-proclaimed expert who appeared on talk shows had named this troublesome age the Age of Dual Education and made a killing on the business book he was selling.

The true identity of that dual education was the long-distance education system that made use of the internet.

In the modern age, anyone could be a student and anyone could be a teacher. The classmate studying alongside you in the ordinary classroom could be teaching something to the girl in the seat next to you.

Depending on the initial agreement, the teacher did not even need to reveal what they looked like, so it was entirely possible a baby-faced student could be using the internet to teach a special class to an elderly teacher at their school.

These classes were classified as “practical hobby lessons”, so they did not need to be registered with the existing educational agency, no teaching license was necessary, and the nationally designated curriculum could be entirely ignored. However, that had allowed the classes to branch out along a much wider breadth of subjects. There were as many individual education courses as there were stars in the sky, so some had started saying the ability to determine which ones would be useful for your future was a kind of talent.

When a class was useful, it was incredibly useful, but when one was not, it was a complete waste of time.

Among all those was the following ad:

“Modern ninja lessons available.”

It was thanks to the modern era that such a class could be advertised so bluntly. Of course, not just anyone who responded to the ad would be given lessons. They were given a background check and an interview via video chat first.

The ad was not one of the larger ones and a red warning label said “class full” over the banner.

(They’ve been working on the front line for a while now, but I guess they’re still technically registered as my students.)

It was obvious when he checked through an external internet connection, but that explained why he did not have any new hopeful students contacting him. That robbed him of his livelihood, but would complaining to Ouka and the others really accomplish anything?

If he was lucky, they would cutely insist they could support him.

If he was less lucky, they would claim he had no choice but to return to his life as a ninja.

“What a pain. My rehabilitation costs are not cheap, but I’m stuck with some selfish girls who refuse to move out.”

Now, did the boy realize how happy he looked as he said that?

The phone sitting next to the mouse vibrated. He grabbed it before it vibrated itself right off the edge of the desk and saw a familiar name displayed on the screen.

“What is it, Hoozuki?”

“Everything is ready, so you can head back home now.”

“Again, ready for what?”

Since the classes were supposed to be held online, physically meeting each other like this could be seen as a slight ethics issue. There was no definite punishment for it, but it may have been similar to how contact between an organ donor and recipient was frowned upon.

It probably made matters worse if his students were breaking into their instructor’s home and plotting something there. He was just about ready to complain about “kids these days”.

(That room really does have thin walls, so I need to get them to restrain themselves.)

With that oddly realistic thought, he paid full price despite not touching the drinks or curry and he left the internet café.

Just as he stepped outside of the multi-tenant building, he was greeted by the loud rumbling of an engine.

Countless Calamities, a reddish off-road motorcycle, was stopped on the other side of the guardrail and a tall and slim girl sat atop it. Dirt bikes were generally made small and lightweight, but this one’s engine had clearly been forcibly swapped out. The rider was a cool beauty with a long silver ponytail and she was not wearing any sort of helmet.

Unlike the other members, Hoozuki always walked around in her ninja outfit. She wore a one-piece swimsuit held in place with various belts and she wore the baggy pants commonly seen on male ninja outfits. The motorcycle made it look something like a bizarre form of riding suit.

She rotated her hips to look his way while remaining on the motorcycle, which showed off the feline litheness of her spine and shoulder blades.

“Hoozuki, you stand out too much! You have padding inside there, so you can silence all that noise, can’t you!?”

“A silently-running motorcycle would stand out a lot more, if you ask me. Besides, you should praise my sensible restraint in not driving Ouka over to see you.”

Nantou Hoozuki gave him a thin smile. She was not the type to express her emotions much, but that was definitely a belligerent and sadistic smile.

He had a bad feeling about this.

“H-Hoozuki?”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“Um, all of that killer intent is about as obvious as handing me a business card and introducing yourself.”

“Like I said, praise my sensible restraint in not driving Ouka out here.”

The Countless Calamities off-road motorcycle suddenly lost its shape below the slender girl. A tremor of a warrior’s joy ran through her spine. Her black, gray, and orange ninja outfit seemed to symbolize pleasure signals. She was serious. Before the motorcycle could take on a different form, Sugiyado rushed into a nearby alley. The last glimpse of it he got showed her holding it at her hip like a cannon instead of like a vehicle.

“Hey!! I taught you mock battles aren’t allowed in residential districts, didn’t I!?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re ninjas, so we have to be ready to work silently and swiftly no matter the time or situation, right? Yes, like performing an assassination in the middle of a national parade without batting an eye. Oh, I just can’t wait. You’re the only decent sparring partner I’ve had since becoming an Elite Ninja!”

He heard the final metallic click as the motorcycle completed its transformation into something else. A chill ran down his spine.

“And you need to isolate your target before negotiating with them, right? Wasn’t it you who taught us not to let the police or a Shogunate ninja near them?”

He just barely made it around a narrow corner before hearing a loud boom that shattered the concrete wall.

“~ ~ ~!?”

Would anyone believe that had been done by less than 50g of special steel?

It was a shuriken.

A number of types existed, but Nantou Hoozuki used one called a combination cross shuriken. It folded up like a pair of scissors, so it could be spread out to form a cross shuriken or folded up to form a stick shuriken.

However, throwing one of those by hand would not be enough to break a concrete wall.

“Technique 1.”

(Is she still using those lazy names!? And this means she actually used the motor, doesn’t it!?)

He could not get a surprise attack in on a projectile-wielding enemy just by moving around horizontally. And optical clones made by scattering a transparent powder were useless in such a narrow alley. A single sweep of the weapon would cover the entire space.

Modern ninja techniques were not magic.

They were only an extension of sleight of hand. But that made them the perfect kind of trickery and technological technique to thoroughly fool the people who boasted that they only trusted their own eyes. It was said to be an ancient yet cutting-edge martial art that could continue to grow as long as technology continued to advance.

(In that case.)

Sugiyado looked all around and spotted the drain spout and external air conditioning unit attached to the filthy building wall.

They were a little too high up to use as footing, but he did not hesitate to draw a Fierce Fang air pressure kunai from his back and throw it straight up. It lodged itself between the wall and the air conditioner, the nitrogen opened it up, and it easily tore through the screws and bolts.

Then he only had to grab the falling weapon and use the lowered obstacle as footing.

“Hh!”

He could not afford to forget the fundamentals.

He stepped on all the things sticking out from the wall to jump about 3m straight up in the blink of an eye. A moment later, Hoozuki leaned around the corner and fired. A fearsome horizontal downpour of steel flew through and blew away the trashcan and rusted bicycle that stood at about the same height he had been a moment before.

By then, he had already backflipped and gotten a look at Hoozuki’s weapon from directly above.

It was indeed Countless Calamities. However, its complex transformation had placed the two wheels against each other so they could launch the shurikens at ultra-high speed like a pitching machine. It could launch a maximum of 3600 per minute and a single shuriken weighed two or three times an anti-material bullet. To avoid the noisy sonic boom of breaking the sound barrier, she intentionally kept them at subsonic speeds. The video she had submitted for class had shown them obliterating training makiwara that were made to be almost as tough as a human torso.

That extraordinary firepower would be enough to defeat a Kingdom musketeer with brute force alone.

(But that unwieldy weight is your weakness, Hoozuki!)

“Wait, above!?”

The belts wrapped around her body audibly strained as she quickly tried to re-aim the wheel shuriken launcher upwards, but it was too late.

In the ninja world, life and death were determined in the blink of an eye. Sugiyado already had his Fierce Fang air pressure kunai in hand. He inserted a replacement cartridge below the grip to complete his preparations.

He descended like a lightning strike.

He landed right up against her lithe back. The kunai was inserted below her exposed armpit like it was a thermometer.

That device could pry open a tank’s hatch with 15 tons of force.

Her spider web ninja outfit could block a rifle bullet, but it would not fare so well if he activated his kunai here.

“See, you haven’t gotten rusty at all, Sensei. I’m glad I could see this.” Nantou Hoozuki remained motionless now that her opponent was behind her, but she smiled thinly. “And I’m glad Ouka didn’t get to see this. If she knew you were risking your health by using your old skills, she’d probably hunt you down and kill you.” Sugiyado said nothing in response.

And after brushing off her casual comment, he thudded his fist down on the top of her silver ponytailed head.

“Owie!!”

She dropped the large gadget held at her hip and tearfully held both hands to her head while her silly voice sapped the tension from the air.

The sensuality of combat quietly burning at that cool beauty’s core instantly dispersed.

“Don’t give me that. How many times do I have to tell you not to fire so many shurikens!? Projectiles increase the risk of leaving some evidence behind, so you need to avoid them unless absolutely necessary!! Not to mention that your combination cross shurikens are especially complicated to make, so you might as well be leaving your calling card behind!”

“Ugh, but you used your Fierce Fang.”

“A kunai was originally a digging tool. And in modern times, it’s used to break open doors, much like a crowbar. I will admit you see them thrown a lot in ninja dramas, but I keep a careful count of how many I’ve used. So, Hoozuki, tell me exactly how many you fired and where? Right now!”

“Well, um.”

Strict Sugiyado breathed a heavy sigh when his student started fidgeting.

“Enough. I get it already. I was counting for you, so let’s go collect them all.”

“Eh!?”

“You were adjusting how much each shuriken was opened so you could control the air resistance and alter their speed and course, right? Did you think I didn’t know you did that?”

“Y-you really are amazing, Sensei.”

“We aren’t diplomats with special protections provided by international treaties, so recovering and destroying evidence is a life-or-death issue. Doing what is necessary should not make you ‘amazing’,” he spat out. “And you were the one who broke that bicycle, trashcan, and other things, so disposing of them is your responsibility. …Besides, I can’t lift anything that heavy.”

5kg felt funny and 10kg made his spine explode with pain.

So if a comrade collapsed in front of him, he would be unable to carry them to safety. A selfish coward like that could not be allowed on the front line.

### 5: The Four Girls

Once they had finished cleaning up, they finally got moving.

“Why do we have to be so thorough? Normal people would never know what they were looking at.”

“Don’t get sloppy in training, Hoozuki. That will only lead to sloppiness in actual combat. I taught you your subconscious is always less disciplined than you think it is, didn’t I?”

“Yes, yes.”

The cool beauty transformed her wheel shuriken launcher back into an off-road motorcycle and tossed Sugiyado a C-shaped plastic device she had been toying with in her hand.

“Place that behind your neck and it will function like an airbag. A gyro sensor will monitor the angle of your head and protect it with a balloon bag in case of emergency. It’s single-use, but convenient.”

He flipped the device over in his hand and spun it around.

“You do love your gadgets, don’t you? I bet you like looking through electronics catalogs.”

“Of course I do. Spec tables for new products are humanity’s greatest literary achievement. Everything needed to spark the imagination is found there. Not even Shakespeare or Doyle managed to invent this.”

“Hmm, so you’re some kinda weirdo?”

“I won’t criticize your zealotry for the Church of the Happy Churn, so how about being a little more openminded, Sensei?”

What a silly thing to say. Sugiyado Souha was openminded enough to accept any person of any age or gender. For that reason, he was not about to say no to riding behind a female motorcycle rider.

He might as well have been embracing the feline litheness of her spine and shoulder blades and he placed his hands around her hips. He had to watch himself to make sure he did not end up hooking his fingers around the belts binding her body.

“Nh.”

“Let’s not make weird noises, Hoozuki.”

“You’re acting calm, but your heartrate doesn’t lie, Sensei. But I’ll take that as a sign that you see me as a woman. I was a little worried about that, but I don’t have anyone else to ask about it. Heh heh heh.”

He cleared his throat, but she must not have meant it as criticism. She provided him the feminine softness and warmth of her back while she set Countless Calamities in motion.

They rushed through the city while the engine rumbled so deeply it almost sounded like a bass instrument.

“I heard you were out shopping with Asagao.”

“I doubt Ouka would give away the surprise, so that must have been Bara. She really has this annoying fetish for causing trouble while pretending to be an innocent bystander.”

“Call it an annoying ‘habit’, Hoozuki.”

“But anyway, I sent Asagao back to your room with the food. So this is my second time out here.”

Hoozuki made sure the others could not even hope to threaten her position as the most mobile of the four. She was a kunoichi whose transformable off-road motorcycle functioned as a means of transportation and a weapon. She could, in all seriousness, leap from rooftop to rooftop or lift up the back wheel and spin on the spot to swing it around like a roundhouse kick. If she was going tightrope walking, she would be safer roaring across on Countless Calamities than spreading her arms to balance herself on foot. That machine was becoming a part of her body.

“Can you stop your ponytail from slapping me in the face?”

“Bear with it. Not even I can make the air resistance go away.”

“Fine, but I’m afraid I’ll eat it if I’m not careful.”

“You’re into some surprisingly kinky stuff, Sensei. Ouka would probably freak if she heard. Y’know, swinging her twintails around like a den-den daiko.”

It did not take long at all to arrive at the rundown apartment despite how far from the station it was.

After arriving back in familiar territory while the roaring engine probably triggered some noise complaints, they found an extremely small girl seated out front.

Her glossy black hair was worn in a bob cut, making her look something like a symbol of Japan, but she was dressed in a white military uniform with a tight skirt. She was 11 years old. With her appearance, any police officer that spotted her would 100% mistake her for a runaway child and drag her away.

“Asagao?”

“Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!!”

Her small head popped up and she started swinging her baggy sleeves around while screaming. She sounded like someone who had spotted a ship on the horizon after a month stuck on a desert island.

“You’re mean, Hoozuki! And you too, Sensei! How could you leave me all alone in that horrific cage!?”

“All alone? What happened to Ouka and Bara?”

After Sugiyado hopped down from the off-road motorcycle’s back seat, Shizukuma Asagao stomped her long boots on the ground and practically tackled him to cling to him. She looked up at him with a tearful and confused face that was not quite angry and not quite relieved.

“I’m saying you left me all alone while those two were emitting crazy auras at each other! It was so scary! Ouka was looking forward to surprising you and Bara went ahead and spilled the beans, so they were just glaring at each other in the scariest way!!”

He had no idea what was waiting for him inside, but he could tell it was not going to be pleasant. And with Hoozuki’s roaring engine, those two would know he was back home, so running away now would be silly.

Expressionless, Hoozuki held a hand out to Countless Calamities and transformed it into something like a rectangular bag.

“Asagao, you specialize in manipulating and dealing in information, right? All you have to do is use your conversational skills to guide them back to a calmer state.”

“Ugh. If you think that’s remotely possible at this point, then take a peek in there. Unlike the rest of you, I’m purely a scout, so I can’t actually fight. It’s a miracle I survived this long here.”

Incidentally, changing shape did not change the mass, so the bag making Nantou Hoozuki’s shoulder blade crawl alluringly below her skin weighed more than 90kg. Her every step caused a strange creaking from the rundown apartment’s stairs. Again, Sugiyado felt like complaining about kids these days.

“Sensei, you’re my Onii-chan, so it’s your duty to protect me.”

“Don’t think you can use that argument to get any New Year’s money out of me.”

Shizukuma Asagao was more than half serious as she tearfully clung to the side of his hip. Since her small head was in the perfect position, his hand naturally ended up petting it while he sighed.

Kuhou Ouka.

Hanasawa Bara.

Nantou Hoozuki.

Shizukuma Asagao.

The four of them really were like precious gems. Sending them out into the world as proper ninjas may have been even more impressive an achievement than anything Sugiyado Souha had done during his time as an active ninja.

Now, could he think of any way to peaceably end a face-off between those Elite Ninjas?

“No, that’s just not possible. Okay, Ouka, Bara! The only solution here is for you to grow up!! I’m making adults out of you right here and now!!”

When he threw open the door and made that announcement, he did indeed see Kuhou Ouka striking an intimidating pose and Hanasawa Bara looking like she was enjoying herself.

However, the chestnut twintails girl showing off her undeveloped bodylines and the red ringlet curls girl crossing her arms to lift up her enormous chest were not fighting to the death using legitimate ninja techniques.

“You want to ‘make an adult out of me’ in this tiny, filthy room, Sensei!?” (Ouka)

“And ‘the two of you’? Does that mean it’s at least going to be a threesome!?” (Bara)

(Um, uh oh.)

He realized too late that he had phrased that last part poorly. Asagao’s warmth had silently left the side of his hip and he could hear the clanking transformation sounds of Hoozuki’s Countless Calamities.

He recalled what he had read in some textbook or another.

Q: What is needed to bring multiple opposing forces together?

A: A common enemy.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbwahhhh!?”

His screams were not going to convince the girls he was not in fact a pervert.

Four active-duty Elite Ninjas attacked him from four different directions at once.

### 6: The Hotpot Party Begins

How many times had he narrowly avoided death tonight?

But after Sugiyado Souha was left in worse shape than the exterior of the old apartment building, something was thunked down in front of him.

“Oh, a hotpot.”

“What kind of reaction is that!? See, Bara, this is what happens when you tell him in advance!!”

“I never said anything about a hotpot.”

Hoozuki had come out and told him all the ingredients, but he kept his silence like a ninja should. Some truths were better left hidden.

“Sensei, I couldn’t help but notice the sad state of your diet. This was a party-size recipe, but it can be made into a single-serving vegetable hotpot as well. You have a small pot for stewing udon in your closet, so fix this for yourself from now on. …Surely you aren’t going to claim you’re so pathetic you can’t even stew something in a pot. Right, Sensei?”

It looked like this recipe was boiled in water. She also added some chicken broth, but she apparently did not like using a powdered chemical seasoning for that.

Silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki expressionlessly tilted her head.

“How did you manage when you were an active-duty ninja? You must have had to gather ingredients on-site and cook outdoors.”

“You’re on active duty now, so I know you know the answer. Official Shogunate spies receive such thorough logistical support that it never felt necessary. The deployment team would give me as many combat rations as I wanted.”

“Those might as well be big chunks of chemical seasoning. I’ve never been able to even finish the ones I’ve been issued.”

“And if worse comes to worst, you can always catch a snake or a rat. There are animals everywhere, from the city to the jungle. Cook it enough and most any meat is edible.”

“And what about infectious disease, Sensei!? Learning to cook like a normal person is a lot easier than showing off your superhuman skills there!!”

Meanwhile, the hotpot on the portable stove had apparently finished cooking. White steam blew from the small hole on the top, so Kuhou Ouka lifted off the thick lid while using a cloth in lieu of a potholder.

“I swear I will bring your diet up to normal human standards. Here you go, Sensei.”

“You didn’t have to do this, you know? But thanks.”

After receiving a serving in a bowl, he started with trying a sip of the clear broth. Next, he ate some of the well-cooked cabbage and chicken meatballs and enjoyed the texture between his teeth.

After swallowing, he gave his thoughts.

“It’s surprisingly normal.”

“Are you saying the home cooking a girl made especially for you is on the same level as a snake or rat crawling through the ditch!?”

“I’m saying it’s a normal amount of tasty.”

“Kh, what does that even mean based on your standards!?”

After all, he had revealed his tastes to include snakes, rats, combat rations, and Happy Churn. The sample set was too bizarre to draw any real conclusions.

“Let me see,” said curvy young Bara, cool beauty Hoozuki, and small Asagao while they used serving chopsticks or a ladle to move the hotpot’s contents into their own bowls. And after trying some…

“I see. That is very normal.” (Hanasawa Bara)

“Yes, I see what he means about it being a normal amount of tasty.” (Nantou Hoozuki)

“Normal. Very normal.” (Shizukuma Asagao)

“Stop calling it that! You’re making it sound like it should have been more surprising or something!” (Kuhou Ouka)

Skinny Ouka grew a bit tearful, but she should have been more observant. No matter what the others said, they were not slowing down in their consumption of the hotpot. They were even fighting over the serving chopsticks and ladle.

“Why are the chicken and the fish both made into a paste?”

“Ouka can’t help it. She’s a ninja teacher’s pet who wants to turn all rice into riceballs and all meat into meatballs.”

Hanasawa Bara squished her large chest between her upper arms as she held her chopsticks and bowl and her comment made still-growing Kuhou Ouka poke her index fingers together in front of her chest.

“B-but that’s what Sensei taught me to do. What’s wrong with doing what your teacher told you to do?”

“While it does take a lot of work, it helps cook the meat more evenly and helps you digest it more easily. For example, if you make meatballs out of the frogs or rats you catch, they really will taste like chicken, so-”

“D-do not talk about that right now!! You’re going to make me feel like I’m eating something else!!”

“?”

Time seemed to fly, which may have been all the proof anyone needed that Kuhou Ouka’s hotpot had been a success.

It was soon time for the finishing touch.

Youngest Asagao spoke up as part of the shopping team.

“Hoozuki and I got in a fight in the supermarket over whether to go with udon or rice soup, but we ended up settling on rice soup. If you use a package of white rice, it’s just as easy to make.”

“Wha-!?”

The shocked party was red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara. She had apparently expected to finish things off with some kind of noodles, be it ramen, udon, or champon.

“Th-this can’t be happening. While the broth doesn’t pack as much of a punch as with sukiyaki, this water mixed with chicken broth is pretty powerful, so everyone knows you follow that off with noodles that are merely coated with the broth, not rice that soaks it all up! Hoozuki, you should have fought harder. No, you should have called me up so I could come running and join the fight!!”

“Oh, Sensei. I’ll be shutting the lid and letting this cook, so it will take a bit of time.”

Ouka ignored the harsh critic who was only interested in the eating side of the equation and she shut the clay pot’s lid with a smile.

“How long will it take?” asked small-faced Shizukuma Asago while she kicked her skinny feet below the low table.

“Cooking it won’t take long at all, but you need to shut off the heat and let it sit afterwards so the rice can soak up the broth, right?”

Cool beauty Nantou Hoozuki explained that while raising her arms and stretching her back in an alluring way. A much lazier time had just set in. With nothing to do, Sugiyado reached for the remote and turned on the fairly small flat-screen TV.

“Welcome to our documentary on modern ninjas. The Shogunate uses its isolationist policies to protect our nation’s advanced technology, such as ultra-miniature processors using molecular wiring, modular nuclear reactors which can be transported by train, and printers that can mass-produce the world’s most complex and detailed currency. But behind the scenes, there is conflict with other nations, most notably the Kingdom. Today, we will be shining a spotlight on that unseen backstage.”

Bara laughed.

“Imagine if the truth about our secret units really was broadcast to everyone’s living rooms like some kind of quiz show.”

“This is necessary.” Sugiyado toyed with the remote in his hand. “When they surround a construction site with tall walls, they will intentionally make one panel transparent. Because everyone can rest easy when they can see what’s going on inside. This is the same. A perfect secret force like you see in the movies would only worry the people, even if they aren’t doing anything wrong. The CIA is the best example there. They’re the world’s largest intelligence agency, but everyone knows their name. On the other hand, no one actually knows what they’re up to. …For people like you who protect the country in ways you can’t explain to the average person, it’s crucial that you can make everyone feel like they’re in the know even though you haven’t revealed anything at all.”

“Not just people like us.” Kuhou Ouka pouted her lips in a way that made her look childish. “For all of us. That includes you.”

“…”

He did not respond.

He hoped they could see his hesitation and conflict in the fact that he did not simply laugh it off and lie.

Now and in the past, he was one of the Hidden Ones who could not be ranked by the usual Low, Middle, High, and Elite system.

“Oh, shouldn’t it be done now?”

Shizukuma Asagao’s eyes widened on a small face which was further emphasized by her bob cut. Ouka sighed before deflating her puffed-out cheeks and going along with it. Sugiyado knew what a kind girl she was.

“Then I’ll drop the beaten egg in. Just a little longer.”

However…

“I know this is sudden, but I’m feeling kind of full.”

“That does happen when you wait a while after eating.”

“This is why I told you to go with lighter noodles instead of this heavy rice soup! Urp.”

“Can you all quit complaining when you didn’t lift a finger to help cook!?”

Young Ouka lightly clenched her teeth in frustration, but the eaters would generally eat whatever was placed in front of them, even if they were complaining all the while. Taking the food away from them would only inspire more complaints, so it was best to just ignore them.

“Here, Sensei. Eat up.”

Ouka made sure to at least serve Sugiyado. While she went all out in serving him, she also had the resolute eyes of a girl who was not going to overlook a thing.

But when she handed him the bowl full of rice soup, it felt surprisingly heavy. It was like she had handed him a whole apple.

“Oh.”

“What was that surprise directed at, Sensei? That might seem trivial, but it is actually very important.”

The twintail girl smiled, but since it was a forced smile, she must have been worried already. She may have noticed the excessive weight herself.

To escape the pressure from directly ahead, he used his chopsticks to take a bite.

“Huh? It isn’t that heavy at all. It’s perfectly edible.”

“Did you think I was making you something inedible!? I wasn’t so hopelessly flustered that I boiled up some plastic! Could you please give a thought to how your comments will affect a maiden heart, Sensei!?”

Her previous worries led her to talk awfully fast, but her face was bright. She must have been breathing a sigh of relief that he had actually accepted it. She kept switching between her “student” and “big sister” identities.

“Huff puff. Yeah, it really is edible.”

“I would still prefer udon next time, but this is good enough I suppose.”

People had a tendency to look down on people when it was their turn to be the critic, so it was best not to take the things they said too seriously.

Once they had finished off every last drop, rice soup time was over and the laziness had returned.

Sugiyado Souha really did bring his hands together in thanks.

“Thank you for the meal.”

“You’re welcome, Sensei. This is what they call human food.”

“Yeah, it’s not bad.”

“It scares me how little this seems to have affected you. To be clear, this isn’t meant to be a rare treat! You should be making sure to eat three proper meals a day!!”

“Which is why I’m so thankful.”

Red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara’s large chest rose and fell in a sigh while she thought to herself and cooled her heated body with the breeze entering through the window.

She and cool beauty Nantou Hoozuki whispered to each other.

“(Hey, Hoozuki. Should we assume Sensei never learns his lesson because living like this gives his caretaker an excuse to visit him regularly?)”

“(I doubt he’s doing it on purpose, but I also doubt he cares if that is the result. In fact, this should be a lot more entertaining if we never point that out.)”

### 7: The Final Moment of Peace

He could no longer return to the front line.

But if this was what the future held for him, attempting that final mission may not been a bad idea after all. It seemed to him that it had been worthwhile. He had been saved by these students who so adored him.

He honestly wished things could stay like this forever. Or maybe he wanted to believe it was possible.

But that did not last even 72 hours.

Before dawn, a certain radio transmission was made within New Yokohama Domain.

“This is Guren. I have confirmed the first report of the incident. I will now regroup with the main unit and pursue Target Group A.”

“This is Suiren. To learn Target Group A’s behavior patterns, I would like to secure Instructor B, a former Hidden One with a strong connection to A. Do I have authorization?”

Even if an individual came to a stop, the world continued to turn.

Sugiyado Souha’s true battle was about to begin.

### 004. Chapter 2

### 1: Outbreak

“It’s finally here! The incredible product you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Never again will you have to wonder what snack to buy. Enjoy this extra-hard Happy Churn created with a new and improved thickener!!”

“Oh, ohh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The 17-year-old boy named Sugiyado Souha gave a bizarre cry inside the supermarket’s snack section.

“I-is this what they meant by X Day? There must have been signs, so how did I overlook them!?”

The core of his body was shaken by the news.

Yes. Happy Churn was humanity’s greatest invention, but it was brittle. The slightest impact would cause the short-lived snack to break. The family packs had each one packaged separately, so how many times had he shoved a couple in his pocket only to find his partner crumbled to dust within the clear wrapper? But that would never again be a problem. No longer would Happy Churn be bound to the home. It could finally spread its wings and fly out into the open world!!

(Th-this is it. With this, I can have Happy Churn with me 24/7!)

Most people discussed how the flour could be improved, but that was not what truly mattered. The Happy Churn God understood where the true foundation lay. It was all about the thickener. It was the same as cooking soba. Yes, Happy Churn had an English name, but it was built on a much more local foundation. And just like arare or rice crackers, this was a snack where you enjoyed the crunch between your teeth.

He nonchalantly grabbed a value pack and placed some random items like bread and milk in his basket to hide what he was really after, but his heart would not stop pounding wildly. After all, this harder version meant 24/7. He could eat them at home and on the go. No one could stop him now. He had to wonder if this was really legal. It was like finding a cheat code to make yourself Level 99 in an RPG.

“That will be 399 yen. Would you like a bag?”

The young wife working part-time saw him off with a smile and the legendary item was finally his.

It was a weekday morning, but no one was going to question his presence out here these days. Skipping school years or skipping straight to employment was fair game in this age where the merit system reigned supreme, so insisting kids should be in school was seen as discriminatory in some circles.

(Hell yes! What do I do now!? I can eat them at meals, as snacks, and even in the bath. No, no. I really need to try eating them on the go. Time and place are no longer meaningful constructs!! Mwa ha ha! Who needs to visit another world when my paradise is already here!?)

However, reality was not so kind.

It happened the very moment he set foot outside the supermarket’s automatic door.

“Don’t move!!”

“Mfh mrh mrh mfh ghh!!”

He was surrounded by extremely concerning metallic noises in all directions.

With men in black pressing the muzzles of their carbines against his cheeks, Sugiyado Souha’s face was transformed into something hideous while he tried his best to protect the shopping bag by holding it close.

“D-don’t…what!? Were they illegal after all!? But hold on! Unbreakable Happy Churn should be a dream come true for every last member of the human race!!”

The boy stubbornly insisted on protecting the shopping bag, but then he heard a solid footstep.

This sort of person did not generally produce audible footsteps. Moving silently was the most basic of basic skills. This was being used in lieu of a business card

The different schools had distinctive ways of moving silently and those in the know could tell them apart. It was similar to how shurikens had been developed to be as logical and efficient as possible, so their distinctive shapes could be used as evidence of who had been at the scene.

“Sugiyado Souha-san, I presume?”

The voice was as clear as a bell.

But the boy managed a frown on his hideously distorted face. He could tell which direction the sound had come from, but he could not pinpoint who had spoken the words.

Because he saw two girls in white dresses there.

Their long skirts with large slits fluttered in the wind.

The twin girls stood alongside each other with such precision they almost looked like each other’s shadow. Their semi-long hair had a golden glow reminiscent of heads of wheat after soaking up the sun’s blessing. There was no mistaking this for bleached blonde hair. One sister had a white hair extension next to one ear and the other had a red one, so that my have been how they distinguished themselves from each other.

The girls manage to be lovely and flashy simultaneously, but that was why the “shadowy scent” they carried with them seemed so out of place. Almost like they were being swallowed up by the shadow cast by the very light they produced.

“I am Shirazaya Guren,” said the one with the red hair extension.

“I am Shirazaya Suiren,” said the one with the white hair extension.

He was finally able to tell them apart. Although if he had not focused on the movement of the lovely buds of their lips, he would have remained trapped by the illusion.

“I apologize, but we have paid you a visit in order to ask your assistance.”

“…”

This apparently had nothing to do with the miraculous invention of hard Happy Churn, so Sugiyado breathed a sigh of relief and slowly put his hands up while wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants that made movement easy. The itchiness of his large scarf bothered him.

“I’m sure we have much to discuss, but isn’t this public location a problem for both of us?”

“If we were second rate or worse, perhaps,” replied one of the twins, Suiren, while she shut her eyes and teased her right earlobe. There was a hint of mockery in her voice. “But surely one of the Hidden Ones is aware of a way to speak in public without any of the uttered secrets reaching unwanted ears.”

He sighed.

They knew of the Hidden Ones rank which was a secret in and of itself. That alone placed the twins beyond a certain line. Whoever they were, they were not going to just let him leave.

It was possible this would become a case of kill or be killed. Even though he had already withdrawn from the front line.

Shortly afterwards, his lips stopped moving altogether. No, his tone of voice had changed entirely as he whispered in a way that vanished into the chatter of the surrounding crowd.

“Like this?”

“Well done.”

No one outside of 3 meters could hear them and the average person could not make it out even within that range. Even if it was recorded, the wavelengths of the background noise and their voices would match too closely to be decoded.

This technique was known as Chirping.

In a field kept hidden from ordinary people, this was as basic a technique as hiding one’s footsteps or presence.

“This tells me you’re active on the front line, so what do you need with someone like me?”

“We would like your assistance as Instructor Sugiyado.”

“Sorry, but the class is full. I am only accepting four individualized digital courses. I wish I could handle more, but I can’t. Besides, what could I teach you if you can do all this?”

“We are aware of that.”

They had introduced themselves and everything, but he briefly lost track of which was Guren and which was Suiren. Although those twins with black bracelets may have been fine with that perfect symmetry.

At any rate, the two girls spoke.

“We would like details on the thought patterns of the four Elite Ninjas you teach: Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.”

The meaning of his silence changed entirely.

Going after the girls’ instructor to learn how their targets thought showed extreme persistence. This was not just for a love of fighting. They intended to come up with a plan and lay a trap to deal with their target.

“I am sure you were very proud of your students. They have all reached the position of Elite Ninja, the highest rank among the spies working directly for the shogunate. And even though they are already working on the front line, we hear you get along well enough to have exchanged addresses so they can periodically return to ask for lessons.”

“And as a former Hidden One, you would know better than anyone how those four think. Yes, enough to predict their actions.”

Of course, he was not just going to agree to this.

Even if they normally only interacted via their phones, they were his students.

“What we have is nothing so special, dammit.”

He was already surrounded. Since his opponent was using the power of an organization, there would already be people watching his home and friends. How much could he do? How much could he protect? He was honestly having a hard time finding any option other than doing as he was told.

But he still said it.

Straight to their face.

“I just wanted someone else to fulfill the dream I lost, so I handed out all of the techniques I had. And those girls decided to stick with this selfish bastard. …How can I abandon those kind girls after all that?”

The white dress twins breathed exaggerated sighs.

This was their actual voice rather than the Chirping. The parents with children arriving at the supermarket finally noticed something was amiss and looked over at them.

Shirazaya Guren’s throat moved alluringly as she breathed.

“We are not unregistered ninjas, you know?”

“Shogunate spies have come to you, so please think about what that means.”

In other words, this was about an incident the ordinary police could not handle.

A crisis threatened the very survival of the country and it was on the same level as the unseen war with the heavily-equipped knight sand musketeers who targeted the country’s technology openly and in secret.

But what did that have to do with Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao? As ninjas, they were supposed to be the ones standing up to those threats.

“It looks like he is unaware what has happened.”

“Are you sure he did not run out to buy some snacks to soothe his sulking heart after they failed to contact him well after they were supposed to?”

That hit the bull’s eye.

But there was no need to let it show on his face.

“What are you saying those girls did?”

The twins shrugged at that question. They had to be skilled kunoichis, but the action perfectly matched their blonde hair and bright skin.

“They stole and ran off with a modular nuclear reactor which can be broken down and transported via freight train. If modified, that could function as a dirty bomb, or it could simply be set to detonate. To be clear, we are acting on the assumption that they will actually use it and not simply use it as a bargaining chip. So please help us.”

“We are front line ninjas as much as they are, but they are a step ahead of us. They seem to have a half day or full day lead on us. So we need to fill that gap somehow. That is where your understanding of their thought processes and ability to predict their actions comes in to play.”

### 2: Beautifying the Flowers

In a simple shower without a tub, a middle school girl with chestnut twintails let the warm water wash over her. Countless drops spilled down her somewhat curvy but still undeveloped bodylines.

In a life on the run, it could be easy to forget how you smelled. It could slip your mind since it was neither visible nor audible, but it could create an unidentifiable sense of something being “not quite right” that could gather attention. Thus, you could not neglect basic hygiene.

Also, the soaps and shampoos provided in these simple shower booths tended to be for men, and that was a problem.

“Think of it like a muscular bandit standing out because his hair has the sweet scent of a women’s herbal conditioner, Ouka.” Her teacher had once explained it like this. “So you need to acquire that along with suitable clothing and makeup and use them before an infiltration as the specific situation warrants.”

Kuhou Ouka had then asked him a question with a mischievous smile.

“Oh? And what kind of scent do you think suits me, Sensei?”

“…”

There was one thing she always remembered when seeing her undeveloped naked body in the mirror while washing away the sweat as part of that “necessary work”.

But she was dragged out of her thoughts by a voice from surprisingly close by.

“Ouka, it’s cramped in here, so quit spreading your hair back behind you with both hands like in a conditioner ad. Restrict your movements a little.”

“Hey, Bara. Did we really all have to cram in here together? The shower booth is cramped enough as it is.”

Ouka was answered not by sexy Hanasawa Bara, whose red ringlet curls were wet and flattened, but by cool beauty Nantou Hoozuki, who had undone her ponytail so her long silver hair was plastered against her lithe back.

“Because this is the shower at an internet café. It would actually gather more attention from an unsavory sort if a single young girl went to the shower alone. It is best not to underestimate amateur peeping toms who put their talents to the most useless use imaginable.”

Black bob cut Shizukuma Asagao was a head shorter than the rest, so she seemed to be drowning in the soft flesh surrounding her. She managed to puff out her cheeks and ask a question.

“What do you think Sensei would think if he knew we were about to be living out of places like this every day?”

In front of Sugiyado Souha, those girls had demonstrated the moody and meaningless pride so common in teenagers, but they had analyzed their own profiles and taken things in the opposite direction. He would never imagine all four of them were cramming themselves into a shower booth as small as a phonebooth.

In the past, finding places to sleep would not have been easy because hotels and inns had built a network with the police that supplied them with photos of wanted criminals. But the spread of room sharing and share houses had expanded their options considerably. At first glance, the advance of digitization seemed to have laid everything bare, but this age was actually convenient for those who lived in the shadows.

Silver-haired Hoozuki grabbed the body soap that sexy Bara held in her arm and reached below her own arm to apply it to her back while asking a question.

“So why have you been staring at your reflection with such a troubled look on your face, Ouka? Checking on your day-to-day growth?”

“No, it’s not that. But bath mirrors always remind me of something.”

The other girls crammed into the shower booth looked over to the cheap mirror that tended to get fogged up.

They all had a faint bitter look on their face. Like they were remembering some kind of failure.

“You too, Ouka?” asked alluring Bara while water dripped down her flushed skin.

“I think it happens to everyone. Everyone knows that’s part of being a kunoichi.”

Even the youngest, bob cut girl Shizukuma Asagao, stared sadly into the distance with her small face buried by the other three girls’ chests.

Ouka sighed while catching her fellow kunoichi’s face with her body and getting their wet legs tangled together.

“Yeah, when you’re training to be a kunoichi, you just know you have to seduce the closest guy to you.”

“On that note, Ouka, what look did Sensei give you when you went all out in your attempt?”

Bara skipped past what that “attempt” entailed, but Ouka still fell silent for a moment.

If he had blushed and angrily told her she was too young for that kind of thing, she might have retained some of her pride as a girl. She might have even found it cute and accelerated further.

But their teacher had provided the “perfect” response.

The resurrected memories brought an ashen look to her face.

“He said everyone has to start somewhere and that I could keep trying until I was satisfied. He didn’t even have to think about it and he looked downright bored. Heh. Heh heh.”

“He wasn’t even interested!? At least look up from the newspaper, Onii-chan!! What’s more important, the TV guide or me!?”

Asagao’s complaint shouted down by a modest chest suggested that their teacher had not mechanically provided them all the same response. But the depressed looks on all four faces staring at that mirror suggested they had all given it their best shot and been shot down.

“Sigh.”

Ouka lightly stretched her back to forcibly push out her still-growing chest while the shower water poured down her body and she looked to the mirror once more.

“I’ve been working on my looks since then, so maybe I could make his heart skip a beat now.”

### 3: The Four Girls – Again

“Sensei, Sensei.”

Those girls had always been following him around like baby chicks.

The modern ninja class was meant to be done over their phones with the materials shipped to them, so it was not designed for in-person contact. Nevertheless, they had worked out his location themselves and arrived uninvited.

“Heh heh. I finally outdid you, Sensei,” Ouka had said with a beaming smile. “A ninja needs to excel with information. Isn’t that what you taught me?”

She had apparently long since learned that he lived alone.

He could still remember it like it was yesterday.

And it had not just happened the one time. They had patiently supported him.

The hotpot they had made for him had been delicious. He had made sure to lecture them on not letting their personal lives interfere with their duties, but they had ended up laughing together, making rice soup out of it, and finishing off every last drop.

They were good kids.

Or he had thought they were. So why had they done this?”

“If I may be so bold.”

After he was led onto a black SUV, Shirazaya Guren cleared her throat and stopped Chirping. The special vehicle had thick bulletproofing and he imagined it was made so shining a laser on the windows was not enough to eavesdrop.

“We have concluded that you did nothing wrong. That is why we have asked for your assistance.”

“We were unable to acquire your records, but we have heard how fiercely you fought against those powerful knights and musketeers.”

“I didn’t do much. The only thing left to prove I fought at all are these scars on my body.”

“Officially speaking, yes.”

“Yes, but only officially speaking.”

Past glory was a double-edged sword.

Especially when you had three bolts in your spine and springs inserted in your legs to replace your ligaments.

A 5kg weight would make his spine feel funny and a 10kg weight would make it explode with pain. Plus, ordinary clothing with no bulletproofing or bladeproofing weighted about a kilo and a winter coat would add another kilo onto that. Frontline combat gear was out of the question.

He could hardly believe those kids had stuck around with an empty shell like him.

“Let’s get started. I want to know details.”

A modular nuclear reactor.

That was what Ouka and the others had supposedly stolen.

No matter which side they were on to begin with, that was too much to smile and ignore. He could not let them use the ridiculous power of a nuke as a bargaining chip no matter what their reasons were.

Shirazaya Suiren traced a finger along the edge of her right ear.

“As the name suggests, it is a nuclear reactor with its design simplified and size reduced to the extreme. It is contained in several linked containers that can be transported by freight train when separated.”

“Although it was not designed for domestic use. It was being researched as a form of infrastructure business to be shipped overseas from Dejima.”

The twins sat on either side of him in the back seat and they took turns providing the explanations. They could only be told apart by the white and red hair extensions next to their ears.

“Shrinking it down makes it easy to transport,” groaned the boy. “But that also makes it easier to steal, or it could be suspended from a plane or chopper and dropped on a target site.”

This had been developed under the fishy-looking title of a mobile nuclear reactor that could be set up anywhere on the planet. If they were lined up along a national border, they would likely function identically to a line of nuclear landmines. Plus, the country could claim it was a peaceful use of nuclear power, so if another country sent out a bomb squad in secret, that other country would be accused in an international conference of using their ninjas, tuxedos, or other special forces to commit infrastructure sabotage. It really was a convenient toy.

When Guren traced a finger along her throat, Sugiyado’s phone rang and it received mission relevant documents he had not asked for.

“Early this morning, the four ninjas under your instruction broke into the Resource Energy Agency’s nuclear physics lab located here in New Yokohama Domain and stole a single Hinata Type-1 Modular Nuclear Reactor. The lab was performing a final stress test in preparation for a demonstration in Southeast Asia, so all of the units were installed with fuel rods. That means they could detonate it at any time.”

“Why would they do that?”

“That is what we would like to know. The Elite Ninja spies you instructed already had status and honor, so why would they suddenly turn on the shogunate they are meant to serve?”

“No, not that.” Sugiyado corrected them while teasing the large scarf over his mouth. “They went to the trouble of breaking into a shogunate lab and then they only steal one of them? If they risked their lives on this, isn’t it human nature to want to steal as much as they could get their hands on?”

The twins exchanged a glance with the boy between them.

“Well…wouldn’t it be a simple issue of the weight limit? While they are simplified and small, these models are still only meant to be transported by freight train. Even with a specialized vehicle at their disposal, a group of just four would only be able to carry out so many.”

“If they got greedy and tried to take too many with them, they could have lost everything.”

They made a good point.

However…

“Then why did they break into a shogunate lab? Wouldn’t it be easier to head overseas where security is laxer and ‘borrow’ one of the reactors lined up on a national border?”

“Oh.”

“I won’t name names, but not every country has as many hang-ups about nuclear power as we do. Some leave rusted nuclear subs sunk at the bottom of a bay or power lighthouses with nuclear batteries and don’t bother to track what happens to them.”

That made him extremely curious why his students would break into the nuclear physics lab.

“Are you suggesting they are not that fixated on the modular nuclear reactor? They went to such lengths to obtain a bargaining chip as absurd as nuclear power, but that was no more than a smokescreen?”

“It worked, didn’t it? Thanks to that, no one knows what their true objective is.”

The SUV seemed to have reached its destination.

Sugiyado Souha stepped out into an underground parking garage somewhere, but he was not guided to the elevator or the stairs.

He was brought to the back of a giant tanker truck parked in the same garage.

And a glance down the maintenance hatch in the top showed the walls were covered in mission documents and it was filled with a fridge, a microwave, and sleeping bags for overnight work.

Within the faint smell of fancy Western sweets, Suiren toyed with her earlobe and whispered to him.

“Welcome to our home.”

There were no windows. The twins closed the hatch after climbing in with him, so he had no way of even guessing where they were headed. He could not even see the 1000m broadcast tower that could be seen from any part of the city. He could only tell they were moving thanks to the inertial forces affecting his body.

“Allow me to introduce myself again. I am Shirazaya Guren, a shogunate spy.”

“Likewise, I am Shirazaya Suiren. We are ranked as High Ninjas, but they say we could take an Elite Ninja’s head when we work together.”

They did not ask for a handshake.

Guren pointed at the wall of documents with her slender chin.

“I know this is sudden, but we would like to fill in the gaps in our information. You claimed earlier that the modular nuclear reactor is no more than a diversion. Would you care to elaborate?”

“It isn’t their style. They wouldn’t know what to do with nuclear power if they had it.”

Images of the four girls’ faces were displayed in the center of the document wall. The photos were probably the ones from the resumes they sent in to be registered as shogunate spies.

“Listen.” Sugiyado Souha recalled a memory of a more pleasant time that was hard to think back on now. “I am going to teach you many things. Some of them will be ways to hurt and harm people, but if you always work toward a righteous goal, there is no fear of your knowledge and techniques getting the better of you. So do not laugh and do not feel shame as you carry in your heart a righteousness you can believe in. That will support you more than you could ever imagine.”

He could remember them cheerfully replying on the screen.

As if shaking free of something and readying himself to fight, he pointed at the photos on the wall one by one.

“Kuhou Ouka. Age 14. Specializes in direct combat. She can control fire, water, wind, earth, and all else with only Midnight Tempest, a bayonet-equipped vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun she made herself. That might not sound very ninja-like, but carrying that high firepower in case of emergencies helps reduce the psychological pressure on the other members.

“Hanasawa Bara. Age 18. Specializes in disguise, camouflage, and other recognition interference techniques. If a door can’t be opened from the outside, she will get inside and open it from there. On the combat front, she is the assassin type. She sows confusion, yet her single attack is extremely powerful. In a way, she is the most ninja-like ninja.

“Nantou Hoozuki. Age 16. She uses Countless Calamities, a transformable multitool of an off-road motorcycle, and those close to her call her a stunt master. Her job is to construct a route into wherever they need to go. She is also skilled at using ropes and ladders. Plus, she can fight. Be on your guard if you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a roundhouse kick from that bike of hers.

“Shizukuma Asagao. Age 11. She is an information gathering expert and she can sneak into enemy territory using the tears and cuteness of a child, but she is also growing into something akin to a hacker. The ninja world is a world of data. You can assume she is the one who gathered all the information needed for a pre-mission briefing. She has no direct combat ability, but she excels at breaking apart enemy groups by causing friendly fire and paranoia. If things seem to be going badly, you should come to a stop and make sure no outside factor is artificially influencing things.”

Of course, those were all fake names.

In fact, anyone who reached their level would have their family register entry and national ID number erased. That meant they had no way of proving their Japanese citizenship.

Each of them was worth their weight in gold and it was said four Elite Ninjas together could bring down a feudal lord holed up in their castle. To reiterate, modern ninja techniques were an extremely dangerous form of Strategic Martial Arts that had been developed anew on top of a foundation taken from existing arresting techniques and military martial arts based on judo, karate, kendo, etc. Even with his injury, Sugiyado could destroy a unit of tanks as long as it was in a limited environment. Ouka and the others were in their prime, so how far could they go while working together?

That was an impressive roster, but Suiren silently tilted her head while toying with her right ear.

“I notice none of them specializes in mass destruction. The closest one would be Ouka, the direct combat expert.”

“She wouldn’t do that. For better or for worse, her only firepower is Midnight Tempest, that hunting gun with a bayonet. If you look through her past records, you should see she never even tries to detonate a gas pipe or gas tank. Unpredictable fire sources mess with her calculations and she wants to avoid the possibility of harming her allies.”

“Then what are they trying to do?”

That question suggested the four girls had not sent any kind of demands. Although it was possible they had contacted some high official and it was being dealt with internally.

If they were going to negotiate, they would isolate the target.

They would demand the target did not let the police or the shogunate ninjas get close.

Sugiyado himself had taught them that.

“The city seems to be continuing as normal, but the theft of a modular nuclear reactor must have messed with some plans below the surface. Do you have a list of the effects?”

Shirazaya Guren’s alluring throat tensed as she pointed wordlessly toward the wall.

One scrap of paper toward the outer edge of the documents appeared to be what he wanted.

“The foreign VIPs scheduled to visit New Yokohama Domain have delayed their visit, a popular motor show was canceled, a new smartphone announcement was canceled, and various others.”

“A major bank, a stock exchange, an insurance company, a government library digital archive, and a cellphone data center have gone into lockdown, but I imagine they are afraid of a largescale EMP attack. The VIPs with delicate medical implants have been evacuated into shielded shelters deep underground.”

“…”

Sugiyado viewed the documents on the wall, approached them, and flicked one.

“This motor show was canceled at the last minute.”

“Yes, what about it?”

“But not all events were canceled. This wall wouldn’t have enough space to display it all if they were.” The boy thought for a moment. “Was this motor show canceled because it is backed by the shogunate’s Ministry of Transport and the people running the show were warned?”

“Keep going.”

“Canceling the show at the last minute will leave tens of thousands of people with nowhere to be. They went to the trouble of traveling all the way here, so they aren’t just going to head home. That means the other events will be more crowded. In the worst cases, the expected occupancy of the venue may be overrun two times over.”

“Are you saying that will inevitably leave the security understaffed?”

“And this might seem crude, but not everyone visiting a motor show is there to see the cars. A lot of them will be there for the companion girls.”

Suiren stopped teasing her right earlobe and rushed over to a laptop. She called up a list of the events being held in the next few days. She must have found it online.

Sugiyado viewed the screen over her shoulder and pointed at one entry in the list.

“That’s it. And it’s only 200m from the motor show venue.”

“An idol festival supported by the international airport? But with 100 groups participating, it looks like it will be a real mixed bag quality-wise.”

“That fits the demographic perfectly. Some self-proclaimed idols might even work as a companion girl for the time being. If you don’t need a ticket reserved in advance and last-minute entries are allowed, they’re probably getting a huge influx of people.”

It looked like Ouka’s group of kunoichis had broken into a shogunate lab and stolen a modular nuclear reactor in order to cancel the motor show and send tens of thousands of people to the idol festival at the international airport. With so many extra people flooding in at the last minute, security would be completely overwhelmed.

Shirazaya Guren gulped.

“But what do they hope to accomplish by sneaking into an idol festival?”

“Beats me. They’ve never been into idols before.” Sugiyado glared at the screen. “But have you forgotten? That festival is taking place at one of the airports that have been doing poorly against the country’s linear motor train network. Sneak in there and you can accomplish most anything.”

### 4: Strategic Martial Arts

The Dejima-like New Yokohama Domain was an area of reclaimed land built out at sea. The only land route in was a large bridge known as the Umbilical Cord. The airport was an extension added onto the edge of the reclaimed land like a second scoop of ice cream. New Yokohama Domain itself was large enough to grow into a city of a million, but its land was not unlimited.

When the tanker truck arrived near the scene, Guren and Suiren left through the tank’s maintenance hatch.

They focused on their earphones.

“As planned, please ‘clean up’ the runways, fuel storage, and anything else that could cause major damage! After that, deal with the digital threats such as the control tower and server room!!”

“We don’t know how they intend to take people’s lives, but we need to assume they are planning something big enough for a modular nuclear reactor to be mere bait! Act accordingly!”

Sugiyado Souha left shortly thereafter and shielded his eyes from the sun with a hand.

There were more people than even he had anticipated.

With so many customers stolen by the linear motor trains, the airport had remade one of its vast international flight terminals into a festival venue. There was no entrance fee and they made their money on the drinks, but that meant the place was entirely out of control. The people who could not get inside were flooding the area outside the building.

“Is this wall of people too much of a challenge for shogunate kunoichis?”

“Do not be ridiculous.”

“You wait out here, advisor.”

By the time he heard the sound of large clothes beating at the air, the twins had both stripped off their white dresses to reveal their ninja outfits made with a spider web structure.

It was like a magician’s handkerchief. The dresses twisted around and the twins’ silhouettes seemed sucked into them before they transformed into the ninja outfits with collars and belts to cover the important parts and some decorations like a large flower on the back of the hip.

Overall, they were a mixture of Japanese and Western. They looked like a sleeveless kimono with a pleated miniskirt added on. They looked as revealing as a cheerleader uniform, but the entire body would be covered by a special flesh-colored material, similar to figure skaters. …Although that was similar to wearing full-body bike shorts, so they still had to wear something on top.

It was strange, but just like with figure skaters, the short skirt was still distracting even when you knew their entire body was covered.

The girls disappeared before anyone in the crowd could turn back their way.

(Does that flesh-colored part support their movements with electric potential elastic belt cylinders? That would be Soaring Wings Ver…what’s it up to now? Regardless, that’s a lot of support. Overusing accessories like that will wear down your own cartilage.)

He could not help but start grading them.

He shook his head, exasperated with himself. That was not his role here.

There was no point in looking up into the blue sky to watch the girls leaping from rooftop to rooftop. He had his own idea of where to check.

“…”

He lifted his large scarf up over his mouth.

The cloth covering his face like a mask had been given some special decoration so it would fool facial recognition. It was not much different from the sunglasses and other commercial products to that end. It was all in how you used it.

He had never hoped to get in through the main gate stuffed full of people and he no longer had it in him to leap around between rooftops, so he made his move on the ordinary backdoor. It was of course locked, but he pulled one of his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais from the back of his hip.

(The nitrogen would be too powerful here.)

He simply stuck the sharp tip in the gap and used leverage to force off the electronic lock’s cover. Then he messed with the wiring within to get inside.

Airports seemed so spacious, but the corridors were cramped when you entered through the back.

Shirazaya Guren and Suiren seemed to think Kuhou Ouka’s group was trying to attack the airport and that the idol festival’s presence was happenstance. Sugiyado had somewhat led their thinking in that direction, but he had another idea.

(A mixed bag of idols, huh?)

A total of a 100 idol groups would take turns performing on stage. They were treated with a lot less care than with ordinary concerts where a single idol or group rented out an entire domed stadium, but this really was a mixed bag. There really were some with the “national” title who earned a billion or even ten billion yen in a year.

A modular nuclear reactor was definitely expensive, but not many people could do business with them. And that included with threats. So if you were after profit, it would be a lot better to use the reactor to get close to an idol whose value most everyone could see.

And despite their value, an entertainer was a lot less strictly guarded than a giant diamond in a museum’s glass case or a gold bar in a bank vault. It was laughable to think you could protect a diamond or gold bar if it was free to wander around town with only a few muscular bodyguards.

It pained him to think Ouka and the other three would be committing crimes purely for money, but this was a professional job at this point. Combat was not kind enough to change its result if you prayed hard enough. He had to harden his heart and assume the powder keg had already been lit back when they stole the modular nuclear reactor.

He borrowed a pamphlet from a cardboard box that probably contained excess stock, he viewed the list of participating idols, and he tapped his finger on the photo of the biggest earner there.

(Shitou Kyouka. It’s gotta be her.)

This might be a largescale idol festival with 100 groups performing, but the organizers and sponsors at the top had their own plans.

This was likely all a way to give their prize girl the trophy so they could claim she fought fair-and-square with a hundred competitors and emerged victorious. And if you ignored the fixed game that was first place, the other unknown idols did have a chance here.

Locating her was not hard.

The internal staff had welcomed that superior idol very differently from the rest. Listening in from the edge of the corridor told him a lot. She was not to be given any cold drinks before her performance, no part-timers were allowed in to play amateur paparazzi, and so on.

When Sugiyado visited her location, he did not find a dressing room.

She had been given a rehearsal booth that was the exact same size as the main stage. It was impressive. With 100 groups participating, it was hard to give them all separate rooms. Idols from the same production company were probably forced to share a room. Simply giving this one a space larger than a school gym all to herself was enough to know how much of an advantage she had been given.

The rehearsal booth was lit up by several lights powerful enough to act like heaters.

In the center of the stage stood a girl with short hair and a mostly black costume with a flashy miniskirt, small wings, and a tail. It was probably supposed to look like a demon.

That was Shitou Kyouka.

Her refreshing voice contained an odd intensity and charm that ruled this vast space even during meaningless voice training.

There was no sign of any staff in here. It was so convenient you would think she had known this was coming.

Sugiyado Souha frowned, slightly twisting the scar on the tip of his nose, and spoke.

“Who are you?”

That national someone tilted her head with microphone and stand in hand.

Everything down to her fingertips was identical to what he had seen on TV and in that pamphlet.

However.

He immediately pulled a Fierce Fang air pressure kunai from the back of his hip and threw it toward her cute little face. A hit from that special assassination weapon could pry open a tank.

Time seemed to stop and silence covered all.

Yes, the girl who was supposedly a professional idol and a combat amateur instinctually tilted her head the other way so the deadly weapon passed right by her.

He asked another question as if that came as no surprise.

“Are you planning to sing and dance looking like Shitou Kyouka?”

Yes.

Kidnapping a top idol would not mean getting paid a massive ransom. Even if her family handed over her credit card or bank information, the bank would reject any request to withdraw all the money from her account.

And no matter how valuable an idol was, she could not simply be sold for that supposed value. She was the same as the modular nuclear reactor in that sense.

So the cleverest method was to use abducted Shitou Kyouka’s body to copy her fingerprint and iris patterns. If her family could not give you access to her bank account, then you only had to disguise yourself as the idol herself.

The top idol on the stage answered him with a bewitching grin.

The microphone stand she held shook.

In the blink of an eye, she revealed a black, chrome steel gun with a grip and stock decorated like a katana. That vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun was known as Midnight Tempest.

He knew what that meant.

“Ouka.”

A memory meaninglessly flickered in the back of his mind.

He decided this was a form of coquetry meant to capture a target, so he forced it out of his mind. Time was flowing all the while.

She threw off the stage costume to reveal the spider web ninja outfit that seemed to proudly display the undeveloped bodylines of a middle school girl. That bodysuit revealed all of her shallow curves and it was covered by a hybrid outfit that looked like the combination of an old-fashioned sleeveless kimono and a lower-body apron. Decorative cloths blew in the wind, a red rope danced behind her hips like a cat’s tail, and long chestnut hair was worn in twintails. He recognized it all.

His thoughts immediately turned to Midnight Tempest, which could control fire, water, wind, earth, and all else and was equipped with a bayonet and a multipurpose sight that resembled binoculars. She was like an incarnation of direct fighting power, a rarity for ninjas. He took a few steps back to adjust the distance between them. It had a close-range blade and its capsule rounds could contain incendiary, freezing, electric, acidic, or adhesive materials. Taking a rush of those varied attacks head on would not be the best idea.

But then it hit him.

She was an incarnation of direct fighting power, but chestnut twintailed Kuhou Ouka had lacked the skill in disguise needed to fool a crowd of a hundred thousand and all the TV cameras.

Which meant…

“No, is that Bara!?”

As soon as he saw through the disguise, the silhouette melted once more.

The ninja outfit he now saw had an entirely different design. This one was a bodysuit worn below a flashy oiran-style kimono that left her shoulders exposed and left the ends of the large obi draping down past her knees. At 18, her bodylines were more alluring than cute. She had a large chest and a slender waist. Her fiery red hair was worn in splendid ringlet curls for a luxurious look very unlike a ninja.

But now was not the time to stare.

He could already hear the sharp sound of something like a long needle stabbing through the air.

It had not been thrown by hand.

Each of Hanasawa Bara’s ringlet curls had a powerful electromagnet woven in, for a total of 18. Each of them was a coilgun that used powerful electromagnetism to launch a metal core, similar to how a linear motor train worked.

She specialized in disguise and camouflage, so her job was to sow confusion and then assassinate the enemy with a single powerful attack.

In this case, she had used the double disguise to alter the distance between them and then destroyed the stage lighting to “increase” the number of flying weapons. It was all an issue of the focal point. If you held a finger in front of your face and then tried to look into the distance, the number of fingers would seem to increase. And adjusting the eye’s focal distance was not the only way to adjust the pupil size. It could be done against your will when the brightness of the light changed. The confusion did not even last two full seconds, but that was plenty of time when you wanted to make a projectile attack.

If he had not been familiar with her habits, it would have all ended here.

“!?”

His hand danced around before his mind could catch up.

He had drawn a new double-edged knife-like Fierce Fang from the back of his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt. He had never submitted the designs to anyone and it was a delicate enough weapon that he doubted even Ouka and the others could use it.

He took that thick, tungsten steel blade and slashed up from below to knock down the pin-like weapons flying toward his eyes. A kunai was originally a digging tool, not a projectile weapon, so it was plenty sturdy.

But that had not been the best move.

(Crap.)

He was familiar with Bara’s thorns. Her weapon was named Candy Needle. Those were special poison needles made by mixing various chemicals with melted sugar and letting them harden. They must have also had iron sand mixed in to launch them with those coilguns. If stabbed by one, your own body heat would melt it and allow it to infect you, but if you deflected one, the shattered pieces smaller than glass shards would enter your body through the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Targeting his eyes had been no more than a way to get him to reflexively move his hand.

(Ghhh!?)

He immediately shut his eyes and turned his head away, but the right half of his vision immediately died. The poison was already being carried around his body after being absorbed by the mucous membranes. But he did not have time to tremble in fear. The enemy was approaching fast.

Sugiyado Souha was not the kind of guy who would let himself be killed just because he could not use one eye. He was suffering from extreme pain and fear, but on a different level, his strategic thinking continued.

(Bara uses the coilguns made from the electromagnets hidden in her hair. That means she needs a large power source – a large-capacity lithium ion battery. If I destroy that, I can bring down her strategic support system.)

Then where was her second heart?

There was only one possibility.

(That oiran-style shoulder-exposing kimono seems like it doesn’t leave much to the imagination, but just like an unzipped coat, her back is always covered. She must be using a harness or something to carry the battery pack like a backpack!!)

It might seem unrelated at first, but the way her large chest seemed lifted by something was likely due to the harness. He could tell a slight difference there compared to her usual red dress. It was like she was wearing a push-up bra.

“!!”

He forcibly cut the pain off from his mind.

He accurately launched one of his air pressure kunais into the groove between panels forming the stage floor below his student’s feet. He had already spun the dial with his thumb, so after exactly three seconds, the nitrogen activated the device and mercilessly destroyed the floor below Bara’s feet.

First, he knocked her off balance.

Once she showed her side or back to him, he would aim for and destroy the large-capacity lithium ion battery that would be hidden below her kimono and obi.

“Was that your plan, Sensei!?”

A moment later, Bara let out a roar while embracing her own body as if squishing her large chest.

Did she fold up her arms like that to avoid accidentally hitting herself?

Her 18 red ringlet curls all floated up and became cannons. She actually fired the coilguns at the floor all around her as if to add damage atop damage. The floor material burst up around her like a crater or splash.

This was not an attack from the Candy Needles that shattered upon impact. This had to be Final Cannon, thick and heavy metal needles that wove depleted uranium into well-tempered steel. Unlike the easily-shattered Candy Needles, these supplied the full power of the coilguns. But what was Hanasawa Bara’s true intent here?

(A makeshift barrier!?)

In terms of modern weapons, his Fierce Fang was similar to a precisely-aimed rocket. Instead of piercing the target like a sniper rifle, it would shred the target from within once it recognized a hit.

That made it vulnerable to obstacles. A single tree branch of leaf in the way would block the line of fire and it would shred the wrong thing.

Both sides of the fight knew each other well enough to block their tactics and ninja arts with simple tricks.

While Sugiyado’s air pressure kunai was blocked by the pieces of the floor, Bara’s Final Cannon could break through that obstacle like it was wet paper and break his entire body and her Candy Needles could weave through the gaps and inject him with powerful poison.

Normally, this would be the end – a hopeless checkmate.

However.

“Is that all you’ve got, Bara!?”

“!?”

He was not broken.

When reaching out toward a student being swallowed by the depthless darkness, his spirit would never be broken no matter how desperate his situation. He had no reason to doubt himself here. He was willing to make an enemy of the world if it would save them. He did not need to think twice to know that.

This was why he had agreed to help Shirazaya Guren and Suiren.

The situation was worsening at an accelerated rate. If it continued on to the end, they would lose everything. And here he was working to save people within it all. He felt like he was once more floundering in that nightmare where he had broken his spine, but that changed nothing about what he had to do.

He could not abandon someone he had grown so close to.

No matter what.

It was in fact his student Bara who looked shocked when faced with that willpower of steel.

He knew they would not hit his target, but he still threw a few more Fierce Fangs. They hit the flipped-up floor panels before reaching Bara, but that was fine. He used the devices to tear apart and destroy the floor material, rearranging the layout in midair. In a shape that Bara had not expected.

Her ringlet curls finally fired the Final Cannon needles of depleted uranium alloy at Mach 7.5, but it was too late.

Just as a bullet fired through glass would have its course diverted every so slightly, Bara’s Final Cannons had their paths bent by the unexpected number of obstacles in their path. They shot right past his face.

He did not even blink.

There was now a narrow empty space between them, much like the eye of a needle.

“!!”

“!?”

A Fierce Fang left the boy’s hand and poisonous Candy Needles left Bara’s hair, but the kunoichi girl would only have noticed something after launching her attack: Sugiyado Souha had lured her into making that attack.

And.

His target was not Bara who had been disguised as an idol. In fact, he could not hope to hit her body that continued its living motions even as she fired from her hair. With an eye taken out and poison in his bloodstream, it was hard to hit a target that could escape the single point of a sniper blast.

So he did to her what he had done to himself.

As soon as a Candy Needle was launched from her ringlet curl, he hit it with his kunai. From the front, that was like targeting the tip of a needle, but the ringlet curl coilgun barrel could only launch the Candy Needle straight out. The ballistic path was easy enough to predict if he already knew which way that barrel was pointed. Especially when the line of fire between them was limited by so many obstacles. That was far easier than targeting Bara herself who continued evading as if dancing.

By throwing the kunai through the open path, it naturally flew toward the Candy Needle. He only had to use the guidelines already set up for him. Unlike Bara’s flowing, living movements, this was as easy as completing a tutorial.

The shattered Candy Needle burst in front of the kunoichi and covered her small face with its small fragments.

“Ah!?”

She leaned back, unintentionally jiggled her large chest, and quickly held a hand to her face, but it was too late.

The flow of time seemed to revert to normal for both of them.

The floor materials spreading out around her like a crater or splash clattered back down.

Sugiyado cautiously pulled a Fierce Fang out into his hand as he spoke.

“Now we’re even, Bara. No, we aren’t. What are the basics of poison effects? I taught you this!”

“…”

She held her right eye and bit her lip a little before finally giving in and answering.

“It comes down to the speed of blood flow and your weight.”

“Yes. And your smaller body means it takes less to reach a lethal dose. Plus, standing under those bright spotlights must have warmed you up like a halogen heater. That means the exact same poison will spread through your body faster. This is checkmate, Bara!”

“Kh…Sensei.”

Given the poison, she needed to avoid getting worked up and thus accelerating her blood flow.

But the boy was at his limit too.

Each of the girls had their own circumstances.

He had taught them all of his secret techniques in order to give them the strength they needed to face this harsh and cruel reality without being crushed.

He had believed it would lead them to happiness.

So why was this happening?

“Then tell me this before we both collapse! Why did you do this? And where are the others!? Ouka and Hoozuki are a part of this too, aren’t they!? Where are they!?”

But in truth, he was in the more dire situation.

I am going to teach you many things.

Some of them will be ways to hurt and harm people.

But if you always work toward a righteous goal, there is no fear of your knowledge and techniques getting the better of you.

That was what he had tried to teach them.

No, he had taught them that.

“Yes, Sensei. Your Ouka is over here.”

He heard a voice from behind him.

Even with the poison’s effects, he had been careless to let someone sneak up on him. Or was this a testament to their skill?

He recognized the voice.

It was Kuhou Ouka, the strange ninja who specialized in direct combat.

“…!?”

He tried to spin around like a tornado with Fierce Fang in hand, but the active-duty Elite Ninja was several times faster.

A dull pain ran through the back of his neck.

Impossible sparks filled his vision.

Once he realized he had been hit with the stock of her unique gun, he had collapsed forehead-first to the stage without bracing for impact.

“Ouka!!” shouted sexy Hanasawa Bara. But she did not sound happy to see help arrive. “Wasn’t there a better way of doing that!? Poor Sensei!!”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Sensei. Are you okay? That hurt, didn’t it?”

She gently flipped him over onto his back. He saw someone with still-growing bodylines peering down at him. He saw chestnut twintails and red ringlet curls. If not for the sinister bayonet-equipped hunting gun named Midnight Tempest and the coilguns hidden in those curls, they would have been beautiful enough to forget all about the ninja outfits and fall in love.

And.

They really did sound worried about him. They were exactly how he remembered them, but that was what made no sense here.

“You…two.”

One wore a sleeveless kimono plus lower-body apron and the other wore an oiran-style shoulder-baring kimono. They both wore bodysuits below that. Those kunoichis made no attempt to hide their ninja outfits made with a cutting-edge spider web structure. That proved they were willing to turn this city of a million into a battleground.

They had stolen a modular nuclear reactor and abducted a top idol. Those were not your average crime.

“Why are…you doing…this?”

He could barely even see while collapsed on the stage, but he still squeezed out a voice as if groping through the darkness.

“Did I…do something wrong? Tell me, Ouka, Bara.”

“Bara, hurry and give him the antidote. Anyone could get their hands on it, but the shogunate’s dogs can be careless in the weirdest ways.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am. It’s really not much more than an animal tranquilizer, so it doesn’t have a lethal limit. Oh, I’m feeling dizzy now too. That’s not good. Ouka, carry me if I pass out, okay?”

“Will do.”

They briskly made preparations just like they always did. He could not even imagine what had caused everything to go wrong.

While peering down at him, Kuhou Ouka smiled in an alluring way that did not suit her undeveloped silhouette.

“Nothing has changed, Sensei. Not for us.”

“What?”

“ ‘I am going to teach you many things. Some of them will be ways to hurt and harm people. But if you always work toward a righteous goal, there is no fear of your knowledge and techniques getting the better of you.’ Right?”

She sounded like she was begging for his praise. Almost like a puppy.

But wait. Could that mean…?

“Hold on. What are you trying to do?”

“Shitou Kyouka is a top idol who makes 10 billion yen a year. If you earn that much, you’ll get the VIP treatment in asset management. She should be immediately welcomed into the special sectors of banks and stock exchanges. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise.”

“But the shogunate will have secret external storage for any information they don’t want to keep too close by. They’ll use the excess space that not even the server administrator is aware of. That defeats the purpose of the usual security methods, but they’re afraid of rival factions learning about the skeletons in their closet.”

Based on the documents shown to him by blonde-haired Shirazaya Guren and Suiren, Sugiyado had guessed that stealing the modular nuclear reactor would cancel some other events and have the bank and stock exchange servers isolated in fear of an EMP attack. But what if those servers contained more than just money?”

“…”

He felt like his brain was tingling.

And not from the poison. He was probably subconsciously refusing to connect these hints together into an answer.

This was about information the shogunate would want to keep hidden no matter what.

And also information they would fear to keep nearby.

“Sensei.”

And his students had said they were working toward a righteous goal, just as he had taught them.

“We want to learn the truth of the final mission that led to your position being unfairly taken from you.”

“We would do anything for you, Sensei. Tch. What an embarrassing line. Stop making me say stuff like that.”

His brain froze.

Yet his heart pounded wildly like it was going to boil over and burst.

(For me?)

This, he had not even remotely expected.

(To save me?)

No. That was the one thing they could not do! Warning bells blared in his mind.

“Ouka, Bara!!”

“It isn’t just us. Hoozuki and Asagao feel the same way.”

“It’s over for me. I’ve accepted it. So you don’t have to dig this back up! No one wants that!!”

“But we can’t accept that. You can’t return to the front line because of your injuries? You can only work as an instructor now? Not a chance. I don’t know what actually happened back then, but they clearly treated you unfairly. If they hadn’t intentionally delayed your treatment, those wounds wouldn’t have been so bad! And making you an instructor wasn’t some kindness from the shogunate. It was the opposite! They didn’t know what you would say if you were given your freedom, so they surrounded you with us. I can’t think of any other explanation for every scrap of evidence we’ve seen!”

“It’s wrong for us to get all the credit. Someone else clearly deserves more praise than anyone. Isn’t that right, Sensei?”

“~ ~ ~!!”

To be honest, he was glad they cared so much for him. It helped immensely to know they remained true of heart and were not kidnapping people for money.

But they could not do this.

The darkness of that final mission was too deep.

If they got involved, not even those four Elite Ninjas would escape unharmed.

“Don’t worry.” Kuhou Ouka crouched down and gently smiled while peering down at his face. “Sensei, we won’t cause you any trouble. You report everything that happened here and continue pursuing us as an enemy. The shogunate’s dogs need some kind of assistance to keep up.”

“And it should help rattle the shogunate bigshots who have something to hide here.”

Sugiyado just about cried out in a desperate attempt to stop them, but he must have predicted that they would have slipped from his grasp before he could do anything.

“You do the honors.”

“Really? I wouldn’t hold back if I were you.”

Kuhou Ouka laughed and took a swig from the vial that Hanasawa Bara handed her. But instead of swallowing it, she kept it in her mouth and moved her face in close. Her slender fingers pulled the scarf down from his mouth.

Her lips tasted of medicine.

The bitter liquid that flowed into his mouth dissolved the toxin wreaking havoc on his body.

“That was my first? What about for you, Sensei?”

After a short bashful pause, it was finally over.

That acted like a dividing line.

“Okay, Sensei, we will be leaving for today.”

“Once this is over, let’s have another hotpot party. We can finish it off with udon this time.”

After laying limp Sugiyado down on the stage, the two girls in cutting-edge ninja outfits stood up. They were really going to leave this time. Without Bara remaining to play the role of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka, the alert level would go up, but they must have decided staying would be too dangerous.

That meant they were moving to the next stage of their plan.

They were headed toward near certain doom.

They really would reach that final mission at this rate. If his students were headed toward the abyss, he could not just sit idly by and let it happen.

(Kh!!)

He desperately tried to reach out a hand while collapsed on the stage.

But he could not do anything.

A moment later, the girls had entirely vanished from view.

### 005. Chapter 3

### 1: Captivating Beauties Behind the Scenes

“Hm, Sensei will always be Sensei, won’t he? Maybe I should have gone with those two.”

A small girl leaned against the railing on a building rooftop while restlessly pulling some fries from a paper takeout bag.

She was about 10 and her glossy black hair was worn in a bob cut, so she might have looked something like a Japanese doll. Except she was wearing a pure white military uniform with a tight skirt. Add in the long boots and she provided a strange mixture of Japanese and Western.

She focused on the earphone that was linked to her phone.

“I never got to say it because he would have gotten after me for it, but Sensei is so cute. He looks like he’s cool and sharp, but he’s a softy on the inside.”

The small-faced girl slowly narrowed her eyes as if thinking back on some memory or another. That proved that she too had memories that she liked to indulge in.

But it did not last long.

“Asagao.”

A voice reached her from the rooftop instead of over her phone. She had not heard a door opening and the emergency buzzer for the emergency exit had not sounded, yet the speaker was there all the same.

Unlike Asagao in her white military uniform with the tight skirt and baggy sleeves, this girl wore a ninja outfit that showed off her figure. In what looked an open-backed one-piece swimsuit plus the baggy pants of a male ninja, Hoozuki was a fusion of extremes in a different way than Shizukuma Asagao.

The cool beauty tightened her various belts and straightened her beautiful back.

“Bara screwed up and we’re on to the next phase. You need to get ready.”

“I just received a call about that. And Bara can hear everything you’re saying. Want to get on the line? She’s pretty mad about you saying she screwed up.”

“But it’s the truth.”

The silver ponytail girl gave a bitter look. Hanasawa Bara was older than her, but this girl was certain she was older mentally.

Nantou Hoozuki was wearing something like a student bag on her back, but when she tossed it to the side, it assembled an off-road motorcycle similar to some kind of spring-loaded 3D puzzle. That was Countless Calamities. Its engine normally produced a loud roar, but the internal components could be directly covered with soundproofing materials on the level of a gun’s silencer, so if she shut off the headlight at night, she could sneak up behind a target in almost near silence and end their life.

“The shogunate’s dogs should catch on soon and lock things down. We’re going to be a lot busier now, Asagao.”

“Sensei won’t sell us out. I mean, he’s so cute deep down!”

“We have to prepare for the worst. Besides, I would prefer it if he gave them an honest report. I don’t want him getting hurt trying to protect us while surrounded by those dogs.”

“You sure sound confident you can handle this.”

“Of course I am,” spat out Hoozuki while leaning forward a bit and curving her back to climb aboard Countless Calamities. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take back our precious teacher’s life. I intend to win this no matter what, even if it means making an enemy of that very teacher.”

### 2: Further Problems

The twins wearing cheerleader-like ninja outfits made from a combination of a sleeveless white kimono and a miniskirt were hurriedly working within an ambulance.

“Suiren, prepare the blood test. I want to see what he was given.”

“Understood, Guren. I will also prepare the stomach pump and the full-body dialysis. If this is slow-acting, there’s still time.”

Sugiyado Souha in his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants had been taken aboard an ambulance they had called instead of heading back onto their tanker truck. He was lying on an electric stretcher, his shirt was opened, and several electrodes attached to cords were pasted to his chest. The truck likely had the equipment for this sort of thing, but they probably did not want anyone associating it with something that stood out so badly.

All three of them left the international airport aboard the ambulance.

“…”

At this rate, they would discover he had been given an antidote for the poison. That could lead to suspicions about collusion between him and his students.

He briefly considered what was going to happen.

If the antidote was discovered, no matter what reason he gave for it, he would be removed from the team since he clearly still had some kind of favorable connection with the targets. That would be an option here. In fact, it would be the best option if he wanted to avoid fighting his students. He might be confined for a while afterwards, but he would be freed soon enough.

But that would prevent him from having any involvement in this incident.

Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

They had not grown corrupt and they were not abusing their ninja skills to cause some major incident. They were obeying the conviction in their heart and attempting to find the truth of the final mission that had so greatly influenced his life.

At this rate, they would never return alive.

So he could not sit idly by and let it happen.

He knew all too well that taking on a burden beyond his abilities would come with a terrible price, just like it had back when he lost everything.

But.

Even so.

It was their time with him that had raised them to feel this righteous anger toward what had happened during that final mission. If he did nothing as they walked toward the precipice, he would have as good as murdered them himself.

His actions here were restricted, but it was still the best place for him to gather information related to the threat those girls faced.

He could not let himself be kicked out.

Ouka’s group did have to be stopped after stealing the modular nuclear reactor and abducting a top idol, but he knew nothing good would come of letting things play out according to the scenario drawn up by the shogunate’s darkness.

He had to outdo them.

He had to use them.

And what did he need to do that? What could he do to avoid suspicion, acquire information on their quarry, and sow confusion within the investigation team?

(The antidote.)

He focused on that.

His options here were limited, so he materialized the smallest of the hurdles he had to clear.

(First, I need to stop them from analyzing the antidote or researching where it came from. I need to trick them. If I don’t, I won’t make it any further. I can’t let them think the antidote came from Ouka. If I’m kicked out of here, I can’t stop those four.)

“Ugh.”

He wrinkled the scar on his nose while groaning and twisting on the stretcher. He rolled from his back to his side and used that movement to catch some of the tape between his body and the stretcher and peel it away to lift up an electrode. Then he only had to place his phone on it and have it vibrate by setting off an alarm in silent mode.

The unnatural vibration messed with the contact between electrode and skin to create an abnormality on the EKG monitor without the need for an outside electrical source.

“His heartrate is abnormal! The amplitude pattern is fluctuating! He’ll go into shock at this rate!!”

“Damn!! Sugiyado-san!!”

It was a little more complicated, but the idea was not all that different from a small child in the school infirmary messing with the thermometer to get an excuse to skip class. Everything had its uses. Even silent mode was fairly loud in quiet places, but it could go unnoticed when there was a lot of other noise around.

Shirazaya Guren gulped and quickly grabbed his shoulders to roll him onto his back again, but he gathered his strength to fight it and kicked his legs in a way that would not put pressure on his damaged back. It would look a lot like he was convulsing as deadly poison circulated through his body. Forcing your way through with brute strength was not the only way to do things. A ninja needed ways to make themselves look weak as well.

If he was rolled onto his back, the phone’s presence would be discovered, so he ended that trick and reduced the intensity of his feigned convulsions.

“Has he stabilized?”

“No, we can’t know that for sure. He could deteriorate at any moment. Prepare the stomach pump!”

While the twins were focused on the monitor, he snuck a hand behind his back and pulled one of his Fierce Fang air pressure kunais from below his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt. He may have been able to aim for defenseless Guren and Suiren’s throats, but he that would mean wiping out the investigation team he needed to use.

(The stretcher uses electric assistance. That means it has a large motor…and a magnet.)

The kunai’s tungsten steel was not the most magnetic of materials, but that was not what he was interested in. He used the pointed tip to unscrew and pop off the cover and then he pulled out the powerful neodymium magnet used for the motor.

The preparation was simple.

“!!”

With an extra large “convulsion”, his back and the rest of his body hopped up and he pushed his palm against the side of a piece of precision machinery in the cramped ambulance. No, he pressed the neodymium magnet against it.

Needless to say, pressing a magnet against a medical computer would cause a malfunction.

“Ah!?”

Shirazaya Suiren’s white hair extension swayed as she cried out and Guren quickly reached for the wiring behind the device, but he used that moment to slip the magnet behind his hips and then return it to the stretcher’s motor while they were not looking. His phone, the air pressure kunai, and the neodymium magnet were all like balls he was juggling. But right now he needed a certain type of courage more than skilled fingers. He was redirecting the attention of more than one person right in front of him while performing tricks right out in the open. This was the standard method of stage magicians, of con artists, and of ninjas.

He had taken out the EKG. There was no more need for restraint in his performance. He shook his body, breathed erratically, and let his eyes crawl around unnecessarily while grabbing at the chest of Guren’s white dress.

“Oh…bh!?”

“Oh, no. The convulsions are back. Suiren, restart the device immediately! Sugiyado-san, I do apologize, but I must strap down your arms and legs.”

“No…wait…my breast pocket…”

“?”

“My school’s…antidote. If they used the poison…I taught them…”

Guren sprang into action. What she found in his short-sleeved dress shirt’s breast pocket was a small bottle of commercial eye drops, but not many professionals would walk around with a set of bottles actually labeled “poison” and “antidote”.

She removed the cap, and…

“Please open your mouth, Sugiyado-san. Suiren, help me! Hold his hands down!! I’ll pry open his mouth!!”

It was said bitterness was the sign of a good medicine.

Now he only had to swallow it.

Blonde Suiren actually gulped louder than him.

“He’s…settled down?”

Of course he had.

He had been given the real antidote quite a while before. But he no longer had to fear the medical equipment recovering and then discovering an antidote in his body. He had created a reason for it to be there.

“Pant, pant.”

(Will that allow me to stick around for the time being?)

He was finally released from his tension.

But the end was not in sight yet.

The ambulance’s radio received a transmission.

“This is Azure Dragon 01. You say those runaway ninjas have made their move? Then hurry up and tell us where to aim and who to shoot. I’m so bored I swear my entire body is gonna rust.”

“Azure Dragon? Who’s that?” asked Sugiyado.

“The armored samurai handling our firepower support,” replied one of the twins.

“This is Yellow Dragon 00,” the other twin said into the radio. “Azure Dragon 01, please remain on standby until you receive further orders. Unnecessary transmissions have a chance of hindering progress of the mission.”

“Sorry, Little Miss Doll, but I’m not good at all that awful sneaking around.”

For once, the calm and composed twins clicked their tongues.

But not at what was said over the radio. They had both looked out the white smoked window.

A heavy gust of wind blew in as a large moss green shogunate truck pulled up alongside them.

This was clearly a military vehicle.

The back had no canopy covering it, so the giant forms curled up in two rows were exposed to the elements.

Instead of adding armor to human silhouettes, these looked like their silhouettes had been remade into those of carnivorous dinosaurs. They were masses of artificial muscles and full-body armor with sinister Gatling guns and grenade launchers worn over the shoulders or back.

These were the armored samurai.

Unlike Sugiyado or the twin kunoichis, this high firepower did not know how to hide. The crests of their samurai families were emblazoned prominently on their chests to identify themselves and these physical manifestations of death would not hesitate to reduce anyone to a puddle of blood in their efforts to uphold the law. These were the berserkers of an insane world that heaped on praise when they heaped on the killings.

This kind of firepower was not meant to be used for domestic criminal matters. These were weapons of war meant to stand up to the extraordinary knights and musketeers arriving by sea and air to steal the nation’s technology.

Guren audibly gulped before responding.

“Azure Dragon 01!! Know your place in this! If you trip us up by practically announcing our presence, you might as well be destroying your own eyes and ears here!!”

“That’s more like it. Do you shut-in cowards need a nice spanking now and then to keep you on your toes? I mean, I’m sure it hurts to kill some fellow kunoichis even if they did run away.”

“Do you question our professionalism!?”

“You know what we call a so-called professional who hasn’t fought in a real war? A virgin. Oh, but I guess virginity makes you more valuable when you’re a girl, huh? Heh heh.”

The sexual turn of the conversation seemed to actually calm the twins down. Using such things to lower a target’s defenses was a kunoichi technique, so this must have put them in work mode.

“But don’t you forget, blondie . You might be working on that Dejima-like reclaimed land, but a doll with those looks is only allowed to strut around working as shogunate spy – instead of being hunted down by them – because you do the work we give you. You won’t like to find out what happens if you can’t manage it. You can guess what might happen if you lose the shogunate’s backing in this isolationist age, can’t you? No one from overseas can ever be truly trusted and there’s not going to be a formal investigation. We’ll have you sit down, place heavy stones on your lap, and keep doubling the weight until you confess to letting the criminals escape.”

“Kh.”

“Get the picture now? You call yourselves kunoichi? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just a fancy word for gloomy cowards without the guts to make a frontal assault. Ninjas have no honor. At best, you’re the gofers for us samurai. If you get it, then work like a workhorse and guide us to our prey. We’re using someone for target practice – you can decide whether it’s them or you. So please, even I’d find it a little distasteful to slice up my formal colleagues and make mincemeat out of them. Gya ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

…Sugiyado Souha could not abandon them.

That was the honest thought on his mind as he clenched his teeth and saw those two bite their lips while pale in the face. This would have been so much easier if they were soldiers pursuing his students after being manipulated by the shogunate’s darkness. But now that he knew the reality of the situation, he had one more hurdle to overcome. He could not just fool these twins and rescue his students. That would place a great debt on the shoulders of these twins who had done nothing wrong. And in the most unfair way imaginable.

So he made up his mind.

He had one more burden to carry, which put him one step closer to death. Just like during that final mission, he was surrounded by an unpleasant atmosphere that seemed to be leading him toward a major failure.

Nevertheless, he did not break. He only quietly updated his list of objectives.

He had to rescue both the pursuing twins and his runaway students.

And he had to escape with them all.

### 3: Battle Preparation Delivery

A smooth rustling sound could be heard.

It came from Hanasawa Bara, a girl with a curvy body and overly-bright red hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls to increase the volume. She had brushed her hair back from a face of such beauty that it would have looked at home awash with a spotlight on center stage, not as a ninja who lived in the shadows.

Her red dress and the ample figure showing through were enough to steal away the starring role in this space.

This elicited an exasperated comment from Nantou Hoozuki, the cool beauty with a long silver ponytail who was riding her lightweight but powerful off-road motorcycle called Countless Calamities. She had never changed out of her ninja outfit.

“That’s quite the weapon you have there.”

“I could say the same about you.”

Bara had woven coils in to her ringlet curls to transform her hair into a sort of linear motor and coilgun. With a total of 18 of those, she could cover all directions around her, but they were also hidden in a blind spot that let her slip past ordinary checkpoints and police searches that only thought to check people’s pockets and bags. It truly was the ideal form of a ninja.

They could fire the Candy Needles made from melting sugar and letting it harden with poison mixed in or the Final Cannon that used an armor piercing needle of depleted uranium alloy, and the entire weapon was known as the Serpent Monster.

“Sensei got mad when I named it the Gorgon. He said I had to go with mythological names for everything or nothing.”

“You made him mad on purpose for some fun, didn’t you?”

“How is that any different from the way you make him grimace by naming each of your bike’s new transformation gimmicks Technique 1, Technique 2, Technique 3, and so on?”

“I just want to make it harder to come up with a countermeasure based on the name, but he’s more of a stickler for aesthetics than you would think.”

“He’s a romanticist. The way he makes it so obvious despite refusing to admit it out loud is so unbearably cute.”

“You mean like that scarf he always keeps around his neck? Well, at least I’ve never seen him stick a scroll in his mouth and hop onto a giant toad.”

“You just know he wishes he could, though.”

“I’m glad he isn’t the type who accepts genetic tampering as ethical. I mean, he gets so obsessed he’d take it way too far once he got started.”

The teenage girls chuckled together in a way that no one would have guessed was part of some dangerous criminal plot.

The four of them had not come from the same place before seeking out Sugiyado Souha’s ninja instruction. They each had their own reason for leaving their peaceful lives, moving into the shadows, and aspiring to be ninjas who got by with trickery. They relied on each other in battle, but they had not seen everything of each other’s lives.

The only one who had done that would be Sugiyado who had gently gotten them to open up their scarred hearts.

Hanasawa Bara came from a noble family and never should have found herself in the shadows. But in order to prop up the samurai families, the shogunate had ordered the number of noble families to be reduced. When her family had been crushed and she had found herself under Sugiyado’s tutelage, she had wondered how she had ended up stripped of her former status and asking a younger boy to teach her.

But when he had noticed she was not committing herself to her studies and training, he had not jumped straight to scolding her. He had instead smiled and told her she did not have to change who she was.

He had simply told her to get the job done. If she could become a ninja who could use her dazzling beauty as a weapon, then she could stay true to herself. So he told her to think up a way to do that.

“…”

In a show of that mature sex appeal, she crossed her arms and alluring lifted her large chest from below, but she narrowed her eyes like a pure maiden daydreaming.

Believers in sports engineering might laugh it off as silly idealism and wishful thinking, but that rose who stood on the front line could tell. The more harsh the scene, the more important and reassuring it was to have a solid sense of “yourself” as a central pillar.

She was certain she had him to thank for not becoming a machine that had missions mechanically inputted and did nothing more than spill blood with blades and shurikens. When her heart had felt in tatters and she had given up on any path other than throwing it out, it was undoubtedly Sugiyado Souha who had held onto it, gradually picked up the pieces and repaired the cracks, and restored her into someone who could find friends and laugh with them.

He had saved her.

No amount of money filling her bank account as payment for missions would ever have fulfilled her heart. She never could have restored herself with that. But he had shown her the way. She was willing to say that her current life was even more fulfilling than life in that luxurious estate before she had become a ninja. She no longer thought of it as a fall or a collapse. She had used those empty days of nothing but wealth as a stepping stool to reach an even greater place.

So now it was her turn.

He could call it insolent if he liked and he could raise his fist and tell her not to do this, but she still wanted to save her master. She wanted to give him the life-saving thing he had taught her. That was the whole of her motivation here.

She toyed with her precious hair and showed off her beauty to the world while holding her head high and asking a question.

“Is it time for the next step?”

“Yes. Let’s get this over with.”

### 4: Buried Ninja Sword

After transferring to a different vehicle in an underground parking garage, they arrived at Sugiyado Souha’s apartment in an ordinary car.

He had been accepted onto their side, so he would be sleeping in that tanker truck from now one. But first, he needed to pack a bag with clothes and whatnot.

He gave a self-deprecating smile while propping himself up on the shoulder of Suiren, one of the twins in white dresses with bold slits.

“So this place was already being monitored, huh?”

“Yes. But only by other spies. Do not worry; none of those samurai were spying on you.”

“Ha ha. Yeah, I don’t want to see one of them hiding behind the vending machine.”

Guren went in ahead of them to make sure the place was safe and then the other two entered the rundown room.

It felt so terribly nostalgic now.

It was a lot like returning home from a trip. The furniture was in the same place and the amount of dirty laundry had not changed, but it did not smell like home.

“I checked around, but there is an awful lot of laundry and trash bags piled up in here.”

It had gotten this bad in just the few days since Ouka and the others had cleaned up for him.

“This cluttered world is unbefitting of an instructor. You will be away from home for a while, so it would be best to clean this up now.”

He was just about to beg them not to expect much from a guy living on his own, but then the twin kunoichis got to work on the towering mountain range themselves.

“Hold on. I can’t have shogunate spies do this kind of work for me.”

“Our duty is to fulfill whatever task is required of us, regardless of what it entails.”

“Oh? What is this? Um, a value pack of Happy Churn???”

“Oh, if you ladies are not prepared for the difficult path that awaits you, I recommend stopping here. You must keep strong or you will be dragged into the abyss before you know it. Don’t blame me if you try one and are addicted for life.”

Meanwhile, they split into a trash bag team and a laundry team and got to work. Having those composed girls emitting a silent pressure while observing what brand of underwear he wore was unbelievably awkward, but he had been placed on the trash bag team. He could not approach them, so he could not use his ninja techniques to surreptitiously obstruct their work.

“Garbage pickup is tomorrow morning, but we cannot wait until then. We can report a tree branch cut down on the roadside out front and have them send in a truck now.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

Eliminating those mountains made the space feel a lot bigger.

He was reminded of how Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, and the others had paid him a surprise visit, rudely said he would get sick living in a place like this, and cleaned everything up for him.

Also, the better view of the room had brought something into view.

A sword in a black scabbard and wrapped over and over by a very long decorative cloth sat in a corner of the room. Unlike ordinary Japanese swords, this one had no curve.

Instead of simply cutting down an enemy, it could be used to create footholds while climbing tall fences, it could be used as a grappling hook for scaling walls by unwrapping the cloth that had a weight at the end, and it could be held out ahead in the dark to check for obstacles.

Shirazaya Guren gulped, sighed, and spoke in an impressed tone.

“Is that a ninja sword?”

“It’s called Salvation & Punishment. It’s too much for me now, but I never had a chance to get rid of it. I’ve just kind of held onto to it even though I have no use for it.”

“That alone shows how much you once relied on it. I see nothing to be ashamed of there.”

Normal(?) ninja swords were made shorter than the average Japanese sword for easier use indoors, but this one was actually longer than average. All of his personal idiosyncrasies must have been woven into its design. It was obvious to everyone that he was fond of the blade.

Guren narrowed her eyes while carrying the last trash bag to the front door.

“Can I ask your story?” said Sugiyado while leaning against the wall.

“It is not a pleasant one.” She toyed with her beautiful blonde hair and let out a slow breath. “We were in an airplane crash. We never had any business with this isolationist country, but once we were swept onto the shore here, we had no choice but to stand on our own two feet. Fortunately, we had talent. Talent at hiding in the shadows and laying out strategies. That has allowed us to avoid the horrors that you heard the samurai mention.”

“…”

“I will not lay all blame at the feet of this era or this nation’s system. There are times when I am so engrossed in a mission that I forget all else. I have enjoyed using the shogunate’s power to act as the hunter. Some of those we have hunted down were blonde-haired girls younger than me. But this is the life we wanted because it suits us. That is all there is to it.”

It was true that most everyone who dedicated themselves to the shadows had some kind of circumstances leading them in that direction. Sugiyado Souha did and so did his students.

But there was something different about Shirazaya Guren’s story that she told with a tremor in her small throat.

They had not chosen this.

The bracelets on the sisters’ wrists likely tracked their location.

It was like they were given money and forced to make more and more high-rate, high-risk gambles with it, but if they screwed up and ended up in the red just once, they would be sold off themselves. Pointing at the losers of those gambles and telling these sisters they had destroyed those people’s lives seemed wrong somehow. At the very least, those samurai, who had grown fat on taxes, were in no position to say it.

“Have you ever wanted to return home?”

“I dream of it every night. But it simply isn’t possible anymore.”

She seemed to be referring to more than just the country’s isolationist policies.

Normally, other countries wanted Japan’s technology badly enough to repeatedly send in scouts and take military action against the isolationist country. They should have rejoiced if some of their own people returned after infiltrating so deep into Japan.

So why would it not work that way?

“Didn’t I say we have already cut down several people with this same hair color? The knights across the sea have us on a list of dangerous individuals, so we could never live a normal life even if we did make it back to our homeland. Without the government’s backing, we would be branded traitors and I imagine we would actually be in even more danger than staying here.”

There had to be more to it than that.

The higher ups had almost certainly intentionally sent those twins to hunt down their compatriots. Both to test their loyalty and to leave the shogunate as the only place they could ever hope to survive, thus making them easier to control. It was a lot like a gang initiation ritual in which the initiate had to shoot a police officer or teacher to cut off any hope of help and isolate them from society.

These were victims.

No matter how much power they might have, Sugiyado could not think of any other word with which to describe these twins.

### 5: Smokey Maze

Once all the necessary preparations were complete, Sugiyado Souha was finally invited into the tanker truck that acted as the investigation team’s headquarters.

(Now, then. It’s 3PM – time for the banks to close.)

He checked the wall clock while losing himself in thought.

He had already gotten himself involved and taken a sympathetic view of the twins, but he could not forget that Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao had no future if the twins captured them.

He had to prevent the investigation from making any progress while still allowing Guren and Suiren to save face.

That would be the best plan. Perhaps it was best described as allowing them to fail gracefully.

He toyed with the large scarf over his mouth as he thought.

(Ouka’s group is headed to the stock exchange’s server room now that they have a copy of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka’s biometric data. They’re after the classified information secretly stored there because the shogunate is afraid to keep it too close at hand. A normal bank wouldn’t have the capacity to store that. Ouka’s group thinks the secrets of my final mission are hidden there.)

That much was correct.

But he could not allow Shirazaya Guren and Suiren to discover that answer.

How could he create a convincing false answer on top of that?

(Ouka’s group made an appearance at the airport and Shitou Kyouka has gone missing. That much is already known.)

Since the entire event had been fixed and the top idol was planned to win from the beginning, she would not have left early. That would normally be seen as a slight to the sponsors who had paid a lot of money setting it all up.

Also, the twins knew about the poison Sugiyado had been given there. At this point, trying to claim he had nicked himself with his own poisoned blade would only arouse suspicions against him.

If anyone could not put two and two together here, he would honestly be impressed.

(I suppose the best option is to send them in the wrong direction when deciding why my students abducted the idol.)

But only if saving his students was his only goal. If he set up a spectacular failure for Guren and Suiren, who could say what those cruel samurai would do to them.

He had to send them in the right direction but have Ouka’s group stay just one step ahead of them. Also, the reason for the delay had to come from the armored samurai, not the kunoichis. And the failure had to so obviously be theirs that they could not possibly shift the blame.

That was no easy task, but that was why it would win him a reward as great as the survival of both sides. It was worth doing.

(Those girls clearly wanted to abduct Shitou Kyouka badly enough to use the modular nuclear reactor as bait. What reason can I invent other than the real one? Or to put it another way, what answer would I find a surprise yet still accept as legitimate? Can I up the scale to a level above a nuclear reactor?)

He breathed in and then out.

And he began speaking.

“There may not have been a real reason for it.”

“What?”

Both twins wrinkled their brows.

He himself was unsure if this would hold water, but right now he had to gather speed, like he was pushing a minecart down a sloped track.

“Shitou Kyouka is known even outside the country, right?”

“Y-yes. The Shogunate must think a talented entertainer will help give them a good name because they have taken the unusual step of releasing her songs overseas. Similar to how we can see Hollywood movies and Western action movies here.”

“That makes her the perfect target that even foreigners would recognize.”

He chose his words carefully.

He used the lag in conversation as a “gap” to draw the twins’ attention.

“I don’t know what led those girls to strike back at the Shogunate, but I doubt even Elite Ninjas could last long against an entire nation while on their own. They need someone new to back them.”

“You mean…?”

“This was a demonstration. By abducting a world-famous idol, they’re advertising that their skills can help anyone hoping to attack this isolationist nation. For that matter, the original modular nuclear reactor may have been intended as a souvenir. Those people circling the archipelago’s skies in their giant flying aircraft carriers must be dying to get their hands on some new ‘made in Japan’ merchandise.”

“You’re saying they did all this not for some physical cash or diamonds, but to create intangible connections!?”

“I doubt that’s their only objective, of course. You two should know all too well how much a powerful backer increases your options. They could flee overseas and enjoy themselves there, or they could use all the new equipment and funding to continue sneaking around Japan and cause trouble here.”

“…”

The psychological scars of their past experiences helped make it sound all the more real to them. Anyone other than those twins might not have fallen silent like this.

He did not let it show on his face, but he apologized to them in his heart.

“So once they have made contact with the knights and musketeers waiting out at sea and in the skies, they hope to throw a big party. This is going to be much bigger than what four individuals can do. They will invite those bored foreign berserkers into the country to start a legit war. Guren, Suiren, give me a list of the important targets those heavily-equipped knights will likely attack first. If any of those are facilities or people that Ouka’s group would want to see attacked, then that’s probably what they’re after.”

He upped the scale again.

The modular nuclear reactor was a nuke, but it was still small. Even if it was made to explode, its destruction and contamination would only cover a diameter of a few hundred meters. The word “nuke” held a lot of power, but when looking at the actual number of people who would be harmed, there were other, crueler ways it could be used.

Now he only had to wait for the enormity of the threat to sink in.

In his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, he peered into the twin kunoichis’ eyes. It took more than a deluge of words to convince someone of something. At times, silence could be a powerful weapon.

“Understood. We will take that into consideration for now.”

“Of course you will. The more options you’re looking out for, the better.” He shrugged while hiding his joy inside. “Then could it be possible they’re after money? Like having the idol agency pay a ransom or something? Or do they have some direct connection to Shitou Kyouka? This might actually be a cheap grudge or jealousy. If not, maybe we should consider the possibility of it being an attack on the airport or idol festival management.”

He rattled off possibilities in quick succession to keep their minds off of any more attractive possibilities than the wrong one he had given already. If Shirazaya Guren and Suiren came up with a list of better theories and even arrived at the stock exchange answer he had to steer them away from, it would sound a lot cheaper if it bordered on the variety of answers he had already given. The weight of words had more of an effect than people thought. It was hard to rid yourself of an impression you had already arrived at.

“I still don’t see why it had to be Shitou Kyouka, but I suppose we should follow the foreign backing theory for now,” said Guren.

“If we narrow our focus down to the front line in New Yokohama Domain, the options look like this.”

While toying with her right earlobe, Suiren added several pins to the map on her laptop.

The water services, the power line in from the mainland, the communication cables, the New Yokohama Aeromonolith broadcast tower, New Yokohama Station, the various Shogunate facilities, and the people given VIP treatment – from samurai to wealthy merchants. The aforementioned stock exchange was even on the list. Seeing it there was enough for his heart to leap in his chest.

But he could not back out now. If he was going to work with the twins to stop his students, he had to guide the Shogunate almost all the way to the goal.

“Here.”

He boldly pointed at one option himself.

It was a location across the street from the stock exchange he could not have them discovering. It was a mere 20m away.

“New Yokohama Mint. Now that new ATMs can detect the Ultra 8 counterfeit money created by the Kingdom, they lost one inroad to gathering foreign capital. But if they gained one of the real printing presses, they could turn all that around. The profit from that would far surpass a black market deal over a mini-nuke. Hand that over when they’re in their time of need and Ouka’s group is sure to earn their praise.”

“But those supposedly have three different tracking devices installed. Even if they gained the plans to the mint and located one, could they really remove all three of them on the spot?”

“Good point. That just means they need some way of instantly destroying all of the sensors without dismantling the device. What the Kingdom wants is the hardware made by expert craftsmen, not the programming inside.”

“?”

The twins both tilted their heads, making their hair extensions sway, so Sugiyado winked and told his biggest lie yet.

“The modular nuclear reactor. Powerful radiation should be able to destroy the circuitry used for the transmitters. If you’re after the components rather than the circuitry, you can wipe out the tracking devices with a burst of radiation. No light or noise necessary.”

### 6: Offline Strategizing

“Mh.”

The underground mall was as complex as a spider web and it connected one giant train station with an entirely different subway station. Extremely-small Shizukuma Asagao groaned at a café there.

The small-faced girl in a white military uniform with a short tight skirt used the fingertips sticking out from her baggy sleeves to operate a handheld game system capable of ordinary internet browsing.

“Alert: a stir is running through the crowds around the stock exchange. They seem to be noticing an oddity in the flow of traffic.”

“Roger that, Asagao. Keep watching via satellite,” said Nantou Hoozuki over the radio. “I’ve confirmed some things while walking around outside. There are an awful lot of vehicles with large enclosed spaces, like a delivery truck, a hot dog stand, a TV broadcast van, and a refrigerator truck. Nothing conclusive yet, but there must be dogs hiding out here. Be on the lookout for heavy equipment they can’t let out in the open.”

“They might all be Shogunate jack-in-the-boxes,” said Hanasawa Bara, also over the radio. “But isn’t their formation odd? They are scattered around the building, but they don’t seem to be surrounding the stock exchange.”

Financial institutions closed even earlier than the schools. Even regional banks closed their general teller windows at 3. Maintenance workers like cleaners and electricians might still go there, but it seemed unlikely a hot dog vendor could do business there in the evening.

“Maybe they intentionally left a hole in their security because they figured we would leave after scoping the place out if they were too obviously surrounding the place,” suggested Asagao who was acting as the host of this chat.

“It might be Sensei,” said Ouka.

“If so, why? To capture us? Or to let us escape?”

Either way, it was rare to find a complete answer on the scene. More often than not, there was no correct answer. They could only use what information they had to search out the most likely candidates and make their choices based on whether they had the upper hand or not, whether they could take an optimistic or pessimistic view, and whether they were on the offensive or the defensive. Instead of using the flexible thought processes of a human, the best way to survive was to use simple, insect-like thought processes: did they smell anything sweet or not, was there light there or not, was the ground wet or not, etc.

“It doesn’t really matter. This isn’t enough to get rid of ush!”

“Hm? Is there something wrong with your tongue, Ouka?”

Small Asagao frowned, but there was no response for a while. And when one came, it was from Bara instead.

“Oh? Having a flashback, you dirty girl? Was kissing Sensei that much fun?”

“What!?” “What!?”

Hoozuki and Asagao had not heard about that and shouted on reflex, but Ouka remained silent and Bara must not have understood the power of the bomb she had unleashed.

“Okay, technically she gave him the antidote mouth-to-mouth. Besides, greeting him with a kiss is perfectly normal. I do it all the time.”

“What!!!???” “What!!!???” “What!!!???”

Ouka snapped out of her confusion to join the shouting this time. Bara was referring to how she would surprise him with a touch to the cheek, forehead, or top of the head while gently biting his neck, but she intentionally left that part out.

Bob cut Asagao trembled in her seat.

“I can’t believe this. Now I want to know how Sensei has been interpreting my ‘I’m going to marry you when I grow up’ magic spell!”

“You’ve been abusing your cuteness to seduce him too?” “You’ve been abusing your cuteness to seduce him too?” “You’ve been abusing your cuteness to seduce him too?”

Based on this, it seemed likely that Hoozuki, the impeccable cool beauty biker girl, had prepared a special helmet for a certain someone and wore a special perfume when letting that certain someone ride with her.

The four girls began seriously thinking they should have gotten to the bottom of those questions before leaving him, but what was done was done. They would have to ask him after solving this problem and reclaiming his honor.

They were willing to fight against everything to do that.

Even if someone they respected from the bottom of their hearts was included in that. They had to figure out whether this formation was meant to rescue them or meant to trap them.

Kuhou Ouka made a decision on her end of the radio.

“It doesn’t matter what it was meant to do because we can slip past this either way.”

### 7: Hidden Battle

Sugiyado Souha left the tanker truck’s maintenance hatch and entered the evening financial district.

He hid his mouth behind his largish scarf and immediately commented on what he saw.

“That is way too conspicuous.”

“Believe me, it’s a miracle those Azure Dragon armored samurai went along with their ‘sit and stay’ command at all.”

“They do not understand why they should ever have to hide themselves. Words are meaningless with someone who uses their heavy equipment to brute force their way through frontal assaults.”

The blonde twins in white dresses remained expressionless, but there were obvious barbs in their words. He hoped these apparent complaints were proof that they were opening up to him at least a little.

(The vehicles everywhere are partially blocking the flow of foot traffic, but nothing has happened to cause a panic yet.)

That was good news. Not even he could hide the true target if there was an explosion in front of the stock exchange.

He glanced across the road at the square smart building that was the mint.

“Where are the presses?”

“Thanks to the Third Economic Measures, they apparently must print a trillion yen by the end of the month, so they rejected our request that they stop the presses and remove them to a safe location.”

That was the policy that had been deemed a disaster even by the sports newspapers sold at the train stations. While it was true foreign exchange rates were of secondary importance given the nation’s isolationist policies, this was still taking it much too far. It was a miracle hyperinflation had not already set in.

“Good grief. So we’re stuck defending the place against four of the shogunate’s Elite Ninjas?” he asked. “Our cutting-edge equipment can’t exactly run or hide.”

“They might be former Elite Ninjas, but they are on the run now. Do not forget that,” said one twin.

“Officially recognized spies are on a different level from those unrestrained dangerous elements,” said the other.

When they had nowhere else they could go, their pride in that position would naturally grow. It was sad once you knew how it worked. That samurai may not have just been talking about their looks when he called them dolls.

“By the way, why are you acting like my bodyguards or something?”

“Have you already forgotten? At the idol festival, those runaway ninjas went out of their way to attack you, their old teacher.”

“It is unclear if they were afraid you would share information with us or if they simply felt betrayed, but that set a precedent. If you show up on the scene, they will attempt to contact you separate from their plan’s timetable. Thus, we have deemed it best to work with you this time.”

He could not criticize the plan, no matter how much he wanted to.

If not for the fact that he wanted to end this without either side going down, it was a decent plan.

But as accurate as their reasoning was, their presence still restricted his freedom, effectively checkmating him.

He had heard records related to his final mission were hidden in the stock exchange’s server since the Shogunate wanted to keep that at arm’s length. Letting Ouka’s group find that would be devastating. They would be hunted down and eliminated by the Shogunate. It was important to prevent those four from encountering Shirazaya Guren and Suiren, but he also had to stop them.

So…

“Seems like overkill, but I won’t say no to a double date.”

“That is not what that means. Joke if you like, but try to use your romance terms correctly.”

Just as Suiren said that while flicking at her right ear, Sugiyado walked forward and kicked up a small rock with the heel of his shoe. He moved his hand behind his short-sleeved dress shirt’s back to silently catch it, hold it tight, and make up his mind.

With a snap of his wrist, he chucked it toward a large window nearby.

The twin ninjas would not know how deadly an attack it had been, but they would know that a reinforced glass window had loudly shattered right next to them.

So if he added some dramatic flavoring, they would buy it.

“Sniper! Get down!!”

He shouted a warning and shoved Suiren behind a car. She was a lot lighter than he had expected, so she gained too much speed and her dress’s skirt flipped up, but it was too late to redo that now. Guren gulped nervously and leaped in the same direction to support her sister, but he dove the other way to hide behind a convertible parked on the curb.

Still behind cover, the boy in a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants pointed toward a random building. The blonde twins looked that way to check almost on reflex, but the instant their eyes were off him, he used the air pressure kunai in his hand to break the door window of the convertible he was hiding behind.

Suiren ducked down and spoke.

“I did not see any light or hear any noise. They may be using subsonic rounds.”

“Gunfire makes Ouka the most likely suspect. Her hunting gun doesn’t use any rifling, so she uses fletching to stabilize the rounds when firing long distance. I want to capture at least one of them, so I’ll head that way through the alleys. You two are too far from the next viable cover, so just ask those heavily-armored samurai to rescue you. Their full-body composite armor should be able to deflect anti-materiel rifle rounds. Once they’re with you, make your way to the sniper’s building along a clockwise route. I’ll approach with a counterclockwise route.”

“Understood.”

“Shouldn’t we send one of the samurai with you?”

They let him reject that idea with a simple wave of his hand. They did not want to be indebted to those samurai any more than he did.

With his mouth hidden behind his scarf, he followed his supposed plan by diving from behind the convertible and into the nearby alleyway, but he ignored the plan after that. One wall of that alleyway was the stock exchange. If he was going to use the confusion to get inside, he would have to do it now.

The back entrance was a steel door with a heavy-duty electronic lock, but he ignored the keypad altogether. He instead focused on the thick communication cables running vertically along the wall. He used a Fierce Fang to slice through a few of those and attached them to his phone.

The inside the of the building was naturally filled with security cameras, but if he cut the footage, the dark screens would tell the security room something was amiss. The general solution seen in movies and dramas was to play an endless loop of the same footage, but that was not as easy as fiction made it seem.

(I’ll set the brightness to maximum.)

Modern pros would take this route.

The footage would continue to be recorded, but he secretly altered the settings. By changing the contrast between the bright areas and the dark areas, he made it impossible to see anyone lurking in the shadows. That would leave no unnatural changes in the length or number of video files.

Once the necessary preparations were complete, it was time to head in.

He stuck the Fierce Fang’s tip between the door and wall at the upper end of the knob and released the power of nitrogen. He could pry open the thick hatch of a military tank with this thing, so it neutralized the lock by physically breaking the thick latch.

The door slowly opened inward.

There was no need to discuss something as basic as fingerprints at this point. Even without gloves on, coating your entire hand with a thin layer of clear nail polish was enough to deal with that. You would be sorely mistaken if you assumed everyone working shady jobs wore thin rubber surgical gloves or black leather gloves. Wear something like that on a midsummer beach or in a sauna and the police would be asking you a lot of questions.

He glanced down at his fingers.

(The trick is finding a good product that properly eliminate your fingerprints without losing the feeling of your fingertips.)

As soon as he set foot inside, he could tell there were still people here.

All trading was done for the day, but that did not mean everyone immediately left and the building’s lights were shut off. This was when the real work began in maintaining the giant communications system used to perform ten thousand transactions every second. There were a lot of actual maintenance workers and a lot of security personnel keeping an eye on things to ensure none of them inserted malware on the system or swapped out a circuit board. Allowing a malicious device to be hooked up here would cause far more confusion than at a pachinko parlor, so this much security was to be expected.

(How will they actually go about this?)

Sugiyado thought to himself while carefully staying in the darker parts of the staff corridors and set up some traps along the way.

He quietly reeled in some fishing line as he continued.

(They stole the biometric data of Top Idol Shitou Kyouka, but word can get around fast and someone might already know she went missing. Especially people who deal with stocks and trading. If they strut in wearing a disguise, they could find her account has been frozen and have metal bars drop down to surround them. So how will they avoid that risk while assuming it’s already known she’s gone missing?)

He knew where he had to go.

In addition to the normal reception area occasionally depicted on the TV news, this kind of stock exchange also had a VIP dealing room. The primary advantage was not needing to go through a public server, which increased the transaction speed up by a thousandth of a second. That was too small for normal people to even be aware of, but to reiterate, computer-controlled financial transactions were carried out at a rate of ten thousand per second. So by obtaining one of the small glass-encased booths in there was enough to perform ten transactions for every one a normal person was capable of. In terms of a turn-based RPG or TRPG, that would be like getting ten turns for every one turn the enemy received. That would obviously make you unbeatable.

And again, the end of trading for the day did not mean everyone left the stock exchange. In a world where a system malfunction could mean the loss of billions in a single day, it was not uncommon for people to only allow their own hired workers to work on the machinery in their booth.

This was where it got interesting.

It was also not uncommon for the VIPs arriving at the exchange to not be the best with computers. For example, with an idol who was not all that knowledgeable in the fields of finances or computer science, the exchange workers would salivate at the chance to “assist” and put their precious client’s mind at ease.

(There they are.)

“Yes. Like I said, I would like to know what is going on with my money.”

He heard a girl’s voice that was not all that loud but traveled oddly far.

But this was not Bara who excelled at disguises and camouflage.

“My mother usually handles this money, but the account is in my name. Just in case, I thought it would be best to know the basics of how all this works.”

In fact, this was not even a disguise.

Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki were there.

The two ninjas were waiting behind her in work jumpsuits with baseball caps pulled down to cover their eyes. Their young age was no reason to suspect them in an age of meritocracy where people often dropped out of school to get a job when they had the talent for it. Going after a stock exchange server from the outside would be difficult, but the hurdle was much lower when you physically snuck inside. With some advice from Shizukuma Asagao who was skilled at cyber attacks, they would be able to work their way in pretty deep. Perhaps even to the secret Shogunate data that the actual exchange workers were unaware of.

In other words…

(Instead of copying her biometric data, they manipulated her into bringing them here herself?)

Word would have gotten around that Shitou Kyouka had disappeared, yet here she was in the flesh and not just someone pretending to be her. Even if the exchange had received word already, they could not afford to be suspicious here. Customers were the top priority even at a stock exchange, so they had no possible excuse for turning her away if she was the real one.

The most they could do was view her companions with suspicion, but if no weapons were drawn, no threats were made, and Shitou Kyouka herself introduced them as her trusted engineers, they could not kick them out either.

The entire point of the VIP dealing room was to use money to trample on the entire concept of fairness. Just like an F1 driver would get mad if they were given a pit crew other than their personal team and a businessman would be furious to receive some unknown court-appointed attorney instead of their personal lawyer during a major trial, finding fault with someone’s engineers could be seen as an attempt at obstruction.

Also.

Finding a way to control a specific individual or group through external means was apparently a romantic ideal on the level of immortality, time travel, and world domination. Various scientists had worked at that one for over 3000 years. The list of attempted methods was endless: incense, drugs, parasites, bacteria, bioelectricity, magnetism, nutrients, sleep deprivation, subconscious stimuli using low-frequency waves or vibrations, patterns of color or sound, etc.

And Sugiyado Souha could make an educated guess as to what his students had done here.

(Is this a form of shadow binding?)

That ninja technique stabbed a short sword or shuriken into the target’s shadow to keep them from moving. It was actually a way of invading someone’s personal space so they felt a pressure that made them hesitant to approach any further – and did so in an instant using the powerful presence of a deadly blade. It was even thought to make people submit to your will on a fundamental level. Anyone would lose the will to fight and fall silent if they had a gun pressed to their head or a blade tip to their heart. This was a lot like a compressed or instantaneous version of that. It affected them before they were even aware of it on a conscious level.

To repeat, this was the same shock that people felt with a gun pressed to their head or a blade to their heart.

And in that state, people would obviously obey any instructions they were given instead of just standing still.

(But this is an awfully long-lasting example of shadow binding. This kind of trick was always the favorite of Asagao since she doesn’t fight directly.)

He was impressed, but his goal was still to end this without losing his former students or the Shirazaya twins.

Unfortunately, he did not have it in him to focus on anything more than that. He had set some things up on the way here, so now he only had to make the decision.

He gave a tug on a long, long piece of fishing line.

As soon as a Fierce Fang was dislodged from the wall, it finished severing a power cable there and the entire windowless floor was plunged into inky darkness.

This was a stock exchange where billions of yen were moved around in transactions made at a rate of ten thousand a second, so they were bound to have backup power. The darkness would last two or three minutes at the absolute longest, but that was enough to engage in a battle without anyone else seeing it .

He ignored all of the presences moving far too obviously in the darkness. A professional ninja would not be that easy to detect. Those were the ordinary VIPs.

He pulled out a new kunai in each hand and leaped more than ran on top of the office desks and reinforced glass booth dividers to take the shortest route toward his students.

The ability to move as easily in darkness as in light was the most basic skill for and true essence of a ninja.

For example, there was an ancient technique of holding your ninja sword’s scabbard out ahead and slowly walking. By feeling the wall before you ran into it, you could quietly avoid it. And if you came across a person, you could finish them off with a thrust of the blade before they could cause a scene.

Sugiyado Souha did something similar here.

By paying careful attention, he could see small flashing lights similar to starlight. Those were the sparks of static electricity that were especially common with long hair. If he focused on what mattered, he could tell where the kunoichis were.

He attacked as if jumping down on them from directly above.

The entire space had gone dark, but he definitely felt the pressure of two gazes looking up at him.

“Sound.”

“Smell.”

Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki kindly explained how they had done it. Then multiple blades intersected. Bara used her hair guns made from the solenoid coils woven into her ringlet curls. The darts she fired were designed to confuse people in a non-visual environment by producing ultrasonic waves with the special grooves carved into them. The sound was similar to a dog whistle and the weapon was known as Ringing Ears.

Hoozuki used a combination cross shuriken given plenty of force by placing it between the tires of her folded-up off-road motorcycle in a process similar to a pitching machine. She was using an engine, but by padding it on the level of a gun’s silencer, she had eliminated almost all the sound.

Their dual attacks crashed into his thrown air pressure kunai in midair, sending orange sparks everywhere. For a brief moment, that blossom in the dark burned the ninjas’ beautiful outlines into his retinas like with a camera’s flash.

(I only threw it with my arm muscles. That isn’t enough for a direct competition with Bara and Hoozuki’s powered weapons!!)

He accepted his disadvantage here.

If he was going to give up just because he did not have the upper hand, he never would have come here in the first place.

(Hoozuki’s attacks can break the sound barrier and Bara’s coilgun can reach Mach 7.5 when she uses the max power of her Final Cannon using depleted uranium alloy. …But what does that matter? I have nothing to fear from a projectile that won’t hit me!!)

He landed and rolled to the side while pulling a kunai from his lower back. He heard a roar of air in response. They too had move to the side, so their paths were drawing a large circle.

There were plenty of simple ways of peeling back the veil of darkness, like anti-personnel radar and IR goggles. Hoozuki in particular could install all sorts of gadgets on Countless Calamities. But Sugiyado concluded that was not the case here. Using the simple enhancements of a machine made you susceptible to disturbance and deception tactics using chaff or flares. He doubted they would rely on something like that in a once-in-a-lifetime battle.

(In the end, they’ll rely on their own senses. That much won’t change.)

There was no obvious exchange of words at this point. Naming yourself before battle could be left to the combat-obsessed samurai who did not have to hide themselves. That could be handled once you had won and secured your safety.

The girls had not forgotten his teachings.

Ironically, that was what made them such a great threat here.

(I should target Hoozuki first. Because she uses that off-road bike as a giant launching gadget, I can get it to destroy itself by lodging a Fierce Fang in there and messing with the transfer of force. Bara detects her target via sound, so the loud noise should affect her more. I can use that to deal with her.)

Bara and Hoozuki could both fight on the level of a tank or fighter craft when at full power, but that destructive force and penetrative power could work against them too. Their job here was to acquire the Shogunate’s unofficial classified data hidden in the financial transaction server, so they could not afford to destroy that device with a stray shot before their work was complete.

(Then again, I’m in similar situation myself since my Fierce Fangs can be used against tanks, but I can’t afford to hurt my cute students with them.)

They had to be finishing their calculations on how to get at him too. After all, ninja battles rarely lasted long. The very next move would change things significantly.

Yet he was interrupted by something else.

It came from his earphone.

“Yellow Dragon 00 to all units.”

(Hm? Is that Guren or Suiren???)

“We cannot find Advisor at the base of the building designated as our rendezvous point. I repeat, we have lost track of Advisor.”

They played by the rules far too much.

He considered risking a transmission during the confusion to invent some reason why he was running late, but things took a turn for the worse.

“All units, please prepare for the worst. We must assume Advisor was attacked like last time, so put together a search team immediately. Select personnel from White Tiger, Black Tortoise, Azure Dragon, and Vermilion Bird Units and follow the path Advisor is thought to have followed.”

“I will continue to the rooftop to secure the sniper there while Guren joins the search team. We must fulfill our allotted roles. Armored samurai, it is time for the combat you so love.”

He thought not just his throat but his lungs had gone dry. At this rate, they would make it in here. Even if they did not think this was the true target, they might search all of the nearby buildings just to be thorough.

That cut off any hope of escape for Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki.

What would happen if they were surrounded by multiple armored samurai?

With Gatling guns, grenade launchers, and rocket launchers, those warriors were embodiments of firepower, so if they pushed in en masse, even his Elite Ninja students could be overpowered and turned to mincemeat. It was not an issue of strength; this was an entirely different type of combat.

He had no time.

(It would be quicker if I did something, but that would arouse suspicion. A call from me is a card I can only play once, so I don’t want to use it up right away.)

He had to make a decision.

He changed direction in the darkness and jabbed his elbow in the gut of a wandering civilian guard to swiftly knock him unconscious.

His goal was the radio in the guard’s hand.

He made sure to spray a borrowed bottle of deodorant onto the microphone to alter his voice on the transmission before sending it out on the standard guard frequency that anyone could pick up.

“Alert, alert! Wires and a glass bottle spotted near Exit A4. It appears to be an acid bomb, so don’t touch it!! Even environmental suits can be melted through with aqua regia or hydrofluoric acid!!”

That would stop the armored samurai. Their banana-thick fingers were not suited for precise work and, as well-protected against explosive blasts and bullets as they were, they should feel an almost superstitious fear of chemical corrosion.

The back entrance would garner suspicion and everyone, including the bomb squad, would focus on it, but that was fine.

“We will be activating the ventilation ducts in preparation for the worst, so stay clear of the ventilation ports on the outside walls! Acidic gas could escape from there, so you’ll be killed if you’re close by!!”

Needless to say, those ducts would be Bara and Hoozuki’s escape route. No one would want to check inside there until the presence of an acid bomb had been completely refuted.

Now he only had to take one more step into danger.

He moved up alongside his students in the dark and whispered one quick comment to them.

“Do what is necessary if you want to survive this.”

He could not stay long, so he resumed moving from shadow to shadow.

“(Sensei, why?)”

“(Stop, Bara. Not now!)”

He heard whispered voices in the darkness, but he did not stay any longer.

After slipping out of the dealing room, he discarded the radio.

It did not matter if it was discovered the acid bomb was a ruse as long as it was not revealed who had sent the message. And he had a bigger issue to worry about now.

(I need to invent a reason why I entered this building and I need to let them know I’m safe before they complete their search of the inside.)

His excuse had to be good enough to save him here and preserve his spot on the investigation team. He had to leave them with as few suspicions as possible.

Once out in the hallway, he tugged on the long fishing line to recover the air-pressure kunai he had used for the blackout trap. Then he escaped to the emergency stairs. He was mostly focused on his earphone as he made another transmission, but as himself this time. He put together a few different response patterns in his head because he could not afford a mistake here.

“This is Advisor. Can you hear me, Yellow Dragon 00!”

“Yellow Dragon 00 here. Where are you?”

“In the stock exchange across the street. My route was cut off by their line of fire and I couldn’t make any further progress that way, so I decided to climb atop a nearby building to pursue the sniper on the rooftop level. Play the rest of this by ear!”

“Are you sure you can do that on your own? How do you plan to deal with the sniper even if you do reach the roof?”

They were weirdly worried for him and it was nothing but a nuisance at the moment. He simply had to interpret it as them treating him with care instead of suspecting him.

“We aren’t being targeted with an anti-materiel rifle in the middle of the desert. The range of a sniper rifle in an urban environment full of buildings, is only 100-150m. Meanwhile, the world record with hand-thrown weapons is more than 200m. I could actually hit them using a curved parabolic arc and they could do the same if we’re talking about Ouka’s unrifled Midnight Tempest. She forcibly stabilizes her sniper shots with dart-like fletching, so we’re on even footing here!”

“But…”

“I’m not going for a headshot here. I can use a random downpour of blades to pin Ouka on the rooftop while the rest of you climb to her position as planned. This won’t last forever, so I’m only holding your target in place for you. The sooner you secure the sniper, the less time I have to spend being viewed through their multi-purpose sight!”

“Understood. But you need to provide a report on this afterwards.”

“Gladly, if I live to do so. I’m ending this transmission.”

He had arrived at the rooftop.

He threw open the metal door and looked around.

The entire story about a rooftop sniper had been a bluff meant to get him away from Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s watchful eyes, so he was not going to find Kuhou Ouka up here. And if they found no one up here after he made such a fuss about it, the samurai would likely force him and the twin sisters to take responsibility for the blunder.

But he could not offer them the real Hanasawa Bara and Nantou Hoozuki in the stock exchange either.

At this rate, they would hold an indiscriminate search of the financial district and his four students would be found. That would undoubtedly lead to bloodshed and that was not what he wanted.

He had to get Guren and Suiren to back down as soon as possible.

And he had to get Ouka’s group to give up on the stock exchange server.

What did he need to get both sides to spontaneously back off without anything appearing unnatural? What did he have to do? He wracked his brains in the short time he had.

(That’s the only option.)

After focusing himself so hard it seemed to take years off his life, he looked up once more.

He had reached a conclusion.

(Guren and Suiren are on official duty here. Soldiers will withdraw if they take an unexpected level of damage.)

He breathed in and out.

(Ouka’s group is doing all this to preserve the honor of someone other than themselves. If they lose that person before their very eyes, they will lose any reason to keep going.)

Was that really the right answer?

Was he wrong about this?

He put his thoughts to words as if checking over every little thing in his head.

(I’m on the investigation team and I’m those girls’ teacher, so both sides will quickly withdraw if I die in some spectacular way.)

### 8: Handmade Diversionary Tactics

There was an etiquette to faking your own death. The most important rule was to prevent anyone from confirming the presence of a corpse until your objective was complete.

If this was an oceanside cliff or a volcanic crater, he would only have to jump in…or throw in a doll disguised as him. But the corpse would not disappear after jumping from a building rooftop. They would quickly check the surface and discover it was a lie.

Which meant…

(I need something that blows up the entire rooftop. It needs to be as flashy as possible. I’m a bit worried on the intelligence front since I’ve been away from those twins, but whether or not I’m going to return to them later on, I need to sow confusion right now.)

Modern buildings had industrial air conditioning units, power transformers, and water heaters installed on the roof. If they shoved all that in the basement, the building would burn from the bottom up if something malfunctioned and no one inside could escape, but if the fire started at the top, the number of casualties would be greatly reduced. That meant he only had to tamper with the gas pipes a little to give him what he wanted.

The problem was explaining who had blown him up and why. Needless to say, he would be framing them for a crime they did not commit.

He had caused enough trouble for Kuhou Ouka’s group already with the nonexistent sniper story, so he did not want to make it even worse. If he took it too far, it could rob his students a chance at returning to their positions as Elite Ninjas.

That meant he had to prepare a different candidate.

(Dammit, I guess I’ll have to get their help with this.)

Some frustration entered his emotions, but his rational mind made a quick decision.

The metal pipe leading to the industrial water heater did not have any kind of valve, so he was forced to pull out a Fierce Fang and stab the tip in to create a small hole. He did not even need to pry it open with the nitrogen. He heard an ominous whistling sound and a unique stench reached his nose. He could sense it clearly even through the scarf.

(This uses city gas instead of propane, so it’s lighter than air. I’ll need to cover it with a sheet or something to gather up enough gas.)

While making that assessment, he spotted a small plastic greenhouse for a home garden on one corner of the roof.

That was when someone else arrived.

The entire rooftop seemed to shake from the weight of all that armor forming a silhouette more like a carnivorous dinosaur than a human.

The standard army grade samurai armor could not fly, but it also looked too large to have fit through the doors all the way up here.

That left just one option.

“Did you use your precious artificial muscles to climb the wall? Not that that means a thing about your own muscles.”

“I don’t care who I’m up against; I just want to get some exercise and fight a real fight. I’m only willing to put up with all these pain-in-the-ass odd jobs if I get a firefight afterwards as a reward.”

The monster with a samurai family crest emblazoned on his chest spoke with a creaking from his giant jaws.

“So what the hell’s all this? I don’t see any sign of the rumored sniper firing on us and I’m detecting the scent of an unnatural gas. …Should I assume this means you’re my reward? As a paper target, I mean.”

Sugiyado Souha did not respond.

More than that, he was honestly relieved. If Guren or Suiren had shown up first, he could not have looked them in the eye.

If he was spotted, he had to do this.

That much was certain.

The worst possible version of that would have been if he had been forced to silence one of those innocent twins.

So.

As long as that was not the case…

“Oh?”

The armored samurai finally noticed something was amiss. His datalink to the other samurai had been silently severed.

There was no need to hide it now.

Sugiyado Souha slowly reached to his back and pulled an air-pressure kunai from below his untucked short-sleeved dress shirt.

There was no need for fear.

Ninjas never played fair. They were generally ordered to find a solution when all hope seemed lost. Their techniques had been polished to the point of earning the name Strategic Martial Arts and they were designed to be used in a dire situation. He found himself in such a situation now and that was the only thing on his mind as he faced that great mass of military weaponry.

“A smokescreen full of metal powder, huh? Scattering aluminum powder to cut off my communications counts as throwing down the gauntlet, right? Were you hoping for a one-on-one duel?”

“If you’re going to name yourself, then hurry it up. I’ll go along with it, but I see no value in that tradition.”

“Hah! I have no name so worthless I’d give it to a lowly gofer like you. Besides, what’s even the point of a male ninja?”

“…?”

“The shogunate takes ‘golden’ kids, poor kids, and kids with certain connections and trains them, but those kunoichis are never worth keeping around in battle. But I do think I can see why those perverts at the top are willing to invest so much money into them.”

“…”

A clear change came over the type of silence coming from Sugiyado.

But the soul protected by thick armor and great firepower failed to notice.

“I mean, they’re creating a bunch of professional ‘women’ who’ve had all proof of citizenship erased. I’d love to know how they’re being trained and what they can do for you with that training! Gya ha, gya ha ha!! Come to think of it, you instructed some of them, didn’t you? Did you get to try them out ahead of everyone else!? How was it? I bet you’re glad you get a taste before they’re all wrapped up and sent to the higher ups! Gya ha, gya ha ha ha ha!!”

The samurai’s crude laughter continued without end, but then he heard something odd.

The dried lips in front of him had moved to form certain words.

“Yes. I am glad.”

That berserker, who had lost his human form inside that thick armor, must not have known what those words meant even in the very end.

Sugiyado Souha’s brain felt like it was on fire, so the words slipped out of him.

“I am so glad you aren’t a good person. Now I can silence you without feeling any guilt whatsoever.”

### 9: Heavy Body, Heavy User

That special combat unit was called Samurai Armor Mk. III – Mountain Beast.

All the necessary armor and motors had been added on atop the human body. That had “just so happened” to make them enormous and it had been declared a success. The wearer’s flesh and blood had gone through a unique change to endure the internal pressure and overall weight, so their body had completely fused with the artificial muscles on the armor’s interior surface and any overhauls or updates to the device literally required major surgery. The armor was not simply removed; it had to be cut off and peeled away. There was no dividing line between flesh and steel and it was the exterior armor panels that divided inside from outside. That was how dedicated they were to combat. Those obsessed freaks had started to forget that they were even human. Protecting their family’s honor and displaying valor in combat was only an excuse at this point.

Those berserkers had so fused with their armor that there were urban legends saying they would produce flesh and steel children if they were to reproduce.

According to their specs, those monsters could instantly move their 600kg weight at speeds exceeding 250km/h. Their bodies had enough power to level buildings and they were also equipped with weapons of war such as Gatling guns and grenade launchers.

Meanwhile, his opponent was a washed-up ninja who could not even carry a 10kg bag.

“Is this some kinda joke? Well?” growled the armored samurai while towering above the boy like a carnivorous dinosaur.

He carefully observed the air-pressure kunai that Sugiyado Souha held.

“Did you think you could dance around my attacks because I’m a big lumbering beast? Well, think again. Do you have any idea how many sensors and radars I’ve got in this thing!? Throw that toy at 10 times the speed of sound and I’ll still shoot it down with 100% accuracy!! Meanwhile, a skinbag like you has no hope of dodging my very first shot!!!!!!”

With heavy metallic sounds, the Gatling gun and grenade launcher on his shoulder took precise aim.

Lasers and microwaves had already accurately located his target. No matter what the boy did, he was doomed to be mincemeat.

And yet.

Nevertheless.

It was a captivating sight.

By the time the ninja flipped through the air, he had already fully dodged the Gatling gun barrage.

“Wha-?”

This was not possible.

This went beyond misjudging the distance with the naked eye. The boy was being tracked and automatically targeted with radars and lasers superior to human senses. Missing even once would have been surprise enough, but the machinegun sprayed 6000 rounds a minute without a single one hitting.

“What the- this thing doesn’t need to be defragged, does it!?”

The armored samurai fired the Gatling gun again, but it could not keep up with Sugiyado Souha as he ran right to left in a circle around his foe. His speed was not even the issue here. The targeting reticle could not keep up and the original lock could not be maintained.

(What? That chaff he used doesn’t explain this. He must have some other way of messing with my sensors.)

Then the samurai noticed something sparkling in the light of the setting sun.

“Water spray? Is that the sprinkler for the home garden!?”

Water could reflect radar waves and obstruct lasers. In fact, weather maps used more than just satellite photos; they also used a weather station’s doppler radar to measure the distribution of clouds.

However, pure raindrops would not fully incapacitate a radar.

Fortunately, this was a home garden. It contained chemical fertilizer and other agrochemicals. Mix those in with the sprinkler and the water might gain some extra effects.

But understanding how it worked did not present a solution.

It would be a bad idea for Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, or Shizukuma Asagao to take on a fully-equipped armored samurai head on.

But things were different for this boy who had been eliminated from the list of Elite Ninjas when he became a Hidden One.

After performing a flip to dodge the ferocious storm of lead, he landed and raced across the roof. He could not be hit by the wild gunfire of the armored samurai whose targeting system had been neutralized.

Meanwhile, the armored samurai sensed no real danger in the boy’s approach.

His guns did not work on the boy, but so what? That was not his only weapon. He still had free use of his 600kg body that could move at speeds greater than 250km/h. His fist alone possessed the power to break down a reinforced concrete building. If the puny human moved too close, he was the one who would be turned to mincemeat.

True, the samurai’s sensors could not get a solid lock, but that just meant he had to use an attack that did not require a mechanical lock. He would aim by eye and kill that exposed flesh that was getting cocky after taking out just one or two cards in the samurai’s deck.

Thick, heavy metal blades extended from the index and middle fingers of that mass of artificial muscle’s right hand. They were a katana and a wakizashi. Those true samurai weapons could cut right through a bank vault door.

“I’ll slice your spine in two!!”

The attack scorched the surrounding air with friction. A flesh-and-blood human had no chance of dodging or defending against this deadly attack.

Nevertheless, the samurai man clearly saw the ninja holding a Fierce Fang air-pressure kunai in each hand and wrapping them around his attack with a spiraling motion.

Before even seeing the result, he was strangely certain that he had screwed this up.

Then his vision flipped around.

At 600kg, that mass of special steel rivaled a bulletproof European car, but he was twirled as easily as a baton.

“Wait, what!?”

Sugiyado had not touched the blades or the armor. The air-pressure kunais’ cartridges had burst and disturbed the air current produced by the blades. Since none of the weight bore down on him, the 10kg weight limit did not show itself here. Yes, that limit was only in theory.

Using those swords had been a mistake.

The samurai could have flailed his arms like a small child to crush that squishy flesh and those brittle bones. He would not even have needed to know any martial arts. But by drawing those swords, he had allowed his enemy to predict their path. When swung at such high speeds, the blades were greatly influenced by the air, so a change there had twisted the samurai’s arm and thrown his entire body around like an airplane flying through turbulence.

Still, was this really possible?

Most modern martial arts were divided into different weight classes because differences in size could be used as a weapon. There were legends of people killing bears or tigers with older martial arts designed for use in actual combat, but the true masters who could accomplish that were few and far between. And most of those were exaggerations made by people hoping to become a legend.

Yet this boy had not hesitated to stand up to a carnivorous dinosaur made of armor and artificial muscles.

Facing a powerful foe required precise movements without the slightest mistake, but that was a lot like performing a tightrope walk between tall buildings. The more it was necessary, the more people’s bodies would freeze up with fear and excitement.

This was a monster.

This boy was a monster.

The armored samurai barely had time to realize that before Sugiyado Souha twisted around and threw multiple Fierce Fangs. They flew true toward the gaps in the joints at the neck and along the torso. They had only been thrown with his physical strength, so they could not pierce through. Only the very tip lightly lodged itself in the gap.

But did you forget about the 600kg weight of that armored samurai? That was twice the weight of a man-eating tiger.

And it was falling.

The Fierce Fangs were caught between the ground and the samurai, so they could not escape that pressure. They were driven further and deeper in. They tore through everything in the way to move from the joint gap and inside the special combat unit.

Just like someone stepping on a rusty nail sticking out of an old board.

“Agwah!? Bwah, gbeh! Ggbgegh!!”

The samurai could only produce a distorted voice and he could no longer get up, suggesting some crucial artificial muscles or nerves had been severed.

“Here’s a lesson for you.” Sugiyado Souha did not bat an eye. “The kunai was not created as a projectile weapon. It’s a ninja tool meant to dig into dirt, snow, or whatever else.”

This time, that “whatever else” was the samurai’s armored body. The kunais played their role perfectly, just like they were digging a hole in a garden.

“W-wipe that smug look off your face. We’re not so different, you know!”

“…”

“You ninjas aren’t fighting without assistance either! You couldn’t! Human strength isn’t enough to throw a 600kg weight through the air! I bet you’re wearing one of those spider silk ninja outfits below your clothes. This is all thanks to the program-controlled assistance of those chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel and those electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders. It all comes down to tech! It’s all about the compatibility between branches of the military! Don’t act so tough just because your spring-loaded rock beat my scissors!!”

But the broken dinosaur’s words ended there.

The boy crouched down and collected something: the buttons that had popped off of his short-sleeved dress shirt during all his vigorous movement. As he did, the shirt fluttered open in front of the stabbed samurai.

There was nothing there.

Not a single piece of technological enhancement.

“A-are you- wait- are you kidding me?”

It was all pure martial arts.

This boy had polished it beyond a tactical level to reach a strategic level. He was one of the Hidden Ones who existed outside the standard ninja ranking system and whose total numbers were unknown. Skills like his were known as “ballistic stealth” because sending him overseas would have political meaning on the level of launching a ballistic missile.

“Are we done here?”

“You had nothing? You really destroyed my Mountain Beast with nothing but your body? Are you kidding me!? I have my honor to preserve!!”

“Are we done here?”

He slowly repeated himself as if to end all of this.

Someone with their family crest emblazoned on his chest desperately continued speaking. He might as well have been begging for his life now.

“Do you have any idea who I am!? You won’t get away with treating me like this!”

“Stop. I thought you had no name so worthless you would give it to a lowly gofer like me.”

That exasperated comment stopped that someone’s words. He had lost the ability to resist even verbally.

The items Sugiyado Souha held were not just traditional digging implements.

Those air-pressure kunais were a combination of instant nitrogen foam and a device used to pry open bent doors. By adjusting the time limit using the dial on the grip, they could trigger 15 tons of force, enough to pry open a tank’s hatch and break the lock. These were handmade tools that would blow off the fingers of anyone else who tried to use them and he had never submitted the design to anyone, including the Shogunate.

Everything he had done was for his adorable students.

But once that wolf threw off all the chains binding him and bared his true fangs and claws, this was what he could accomplish.

With his mouth hidden behind his large scarf, he made one final statement.

“You can go to your grave without anyone knowing your name, monster.”

A moment later, the old wolf’s fangs shredded the flesh of that fat pig from within.

### 10: Pure and Impure

It was all over.

But there never had been a sniper and the scene now contained the dismembered corpse of a samurai who had been monstrous but held a legitimate position in the Shogunate. Everything was going to fall apart at this rate. Sugiyado had to do something and fast. Disturbing the investigation from the twins’ side would have to wait.

(They would have suspected something if I disappeared on my own, but with one of those powerful armored samurai dead, they’ll just assume we were up against someone not even I could handle.)

That enemy would have to be someone with enough firepower to obliterate an armored samurai to the point that the cause of death could not be determined. Not even Ouka could manage that.

But there was someone else who was the perfect candidate for that. Someone who everyone would think of and who everyone would accept as the culprit.

While continuing his work on the gas explosion, he manually dialed a number he had erased from his phone.

“John, are you free right now? I’d like to ask you a favor.”

“I can make time for this. I was wondering how long you were going to make me wait before I could repay you for that old debt. Now, what do you need from this bored knight who was given a court rank by our lovely queen?”

“Please. I’m about to set off one hell of an alarm clock, so can you knights take the blame for me? If it’s known the Kingdom did this, they won’t be suspicious when they find one of their armored samurai was blown up.”

### 006. Chapter 4

### 1: It Refuses to Fade to Sepia

His final mission had been a lot more complex than most everyone thought. After all, it began with the Shogunate and the Kingdom competing to be the first to kill some terrorists, but eventually ended with him being pursued by both the samurai and knights while he tried to protect a small queen of only 10 years old.

It all started with the queen studying abroad in the Dejima-like New Yokohama Domain.

But a faction that wanted to extend those Dejima-like rules onto the mainland threatened the Shogunate with a letter written using the queen’s forged handwriting and took over a university on the island. However, they failed, their deception was discovered, and they had no choice but to hole up on the campus where the queen happened to be.

That faction was quickly suppressed and it looked like the incident was at an end.

But that was only the beginning.

It came down to a series of truly bizarre events, but the Shogunate’s armored samurai and the Kingdom’s armored knights worked hard to thoroughly slaughter that criminal group with their extraordinary firepower. Like some kind of sick military exercise held in the presence of the queen, they seemed to compete to see who could reduce more enemies to mincemeat as if that would earn her favor. Not only that, but they competed to see who could reach the small queen first and worked to obstruct each other, creating a devastating firefight on what should have been an enemy-less battlefield.

She was, after all, the queen of the Kingdom, one of the world’s most powerful nations.

Despite their isolationist policies, the Shogunate officials wanted a diplomatic contact point, and the Kingdom’s military officials were desperate to earn the distinction of having protected their queen. The samurai and knights below the officials went berserk in their attempt to prove their valor in battle. From top to bottom, it was utter chaos, like a game of ultra-heavyweight beach flags where steel and gunpowder blossomed. They were all supposedly working to protect the queen, but no one there was paying any attention to whether or not their stray shots would hit her or their steel feet would trample her slender body.

You would almost have thought they were more interested in retrieving her corpse – or a small piece of it – and bringing it back to their country for some kind of reward. It was like watching people who so revered the blood and bones of the saints that they started physically grappling over their relics.

And for those who wanted to do the Kingdom a favor to create a solid diplomatic connection, maybe that really was enough.

They all obeyed the righteousness and desire within themselves by grabbing for that soft flag with such strength they were bound to crush the life out of it, but very few actually managed to reach the queen.

From the Kingdom, only a knight named John Kniferidge.

From the Shogunate, only a Hidden One named Sugiyado Souha.

One used extraordinary armor and the other used an extraordinary blade.

When Sugiyado saw that 10-year-old queen in the greatest danger of her life due to so many people working to “rescue” her, why had he decided to intervene in a major world event even if it meant betraying his own country? No, why had he decided to protect that small life?

He could not put to words exactly why the scales of his heart had tilted in that direction.

But he felt it had been worth it.

That close yet distant neighbor had said she loved this country built atop outdated isolationist policies and that she had moved there to study abroad so she could learn more about it. That girl had held such an awkward, immature, and flawed ideal in her heart. But as wild as he had been at the time, he had decided she was worth fighting to protect even if it meant betting his entire life on it.

It had ended in a draw.

He had successfully protected the queen, but he had been stripped of his wings as a result.

Yes, because a true monster had shown itself there.

### 2: The View from Outside His World

The sun set and night had fallen, yet a different, irritatingly bright sun had risen to the deck of a tanker anchored out at sea.

“Hello, honored guest!! I hear you have yet again been brought to tears by some lovely ladies. You never change, Mr. Greatest Ninja!! Hah hah!!”

A blond man, who would seem more at home with a soda than tea and who looked more like an American football player than a British gentleman, greeted Sugiyado Souha with booming laughter. He appeared to be wearing a leather jacket over a thick jumpsuit, but that was not technically accurate. It was based off of a flight suit designed to withstand a high-g environment.

Sugiyado sighed.

“You never change either. And thanks for the replacement buttons. The Kingdom’s maids are on a whole other level.”

“Enough flattery. I’ve heard from our Tuxedos how dangerous your kunoichis are.”

The boy showed off his short-sleeved dress shirt with new buttons sewn on.

“Did you cover up the evidence like I asked?”

“Don’t you underestimate my armor. This stuff is so much nicer than those ugly things the cowards in the Shogunate threw together.”

The large blond man winked and tapped some polished armor with the back of his hand. It stood 2 or 3 meters tall. It barely fell into the category of something that was “worn” rather than “piloted” and it was the source of the Kingdom’s high firepower.

That knight’s armor was known as Claiomh Solais.

It was technically categorized as a fortress-class mobile powered suit.

Compared to the samurai’s dinosaur-like combat units, these retained more of a human shape. They were made of beautiful silver armor and a large-caliber railgun designed like a lance. The designers had clearly had some fun with it beyond simply pursuing practicality. It was said that many other countries would attack Japan in order to steal the isolationist country’s technology, but some were better at it than others. The Kingdom was five or even ten steps ahead of everyone else in this particular field.

Although their biggest flaw was the purely military focus of their technology that gave them nothing to give back to the people.

This ship looked like a rundown tanker, but it was actually a disguised carrier ship for this one device.

The other machines standing further back where unmanned musketeers connected to the knight with a datalink, so this was quite the reception.

“As requested, I used this bad boy to scrub that stock exchange’s roof clean, like I was scratching off a lottery ticket. They’ll assume I killed that armored samurai and you will be considered missing in action.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine! I was excited being deployed to the Far East, but I didn’t have much to do here. Now if I’m being honest, I would have loved to continue enjoying this ocean cruise while getting to know the maids better, but if I don’t show some results every once in a while, they’ll send one of those damn inspectors here. In that sense, I should be thanking you. The honor of killing a samurai was exactly what I needed, so don’t worry about it.” John laughed. “Oh, right. You should really speak with Queen Violia about this later. I’ll prepare a secure line for you. If you don’t explain what really happened, I might just be charged with the crime of killing an honored guest.”

“Oh, god. Not that little thing.”

“She’s not so little anymore; her figure is starting to fill out. And in exchange, she seems awfully irritable once a month. Now, I don’t know what her exact cycle is, so you just need to pray you aren’t catching her at that time of month today.”

Once inside the tanker’s pilothouse, they used a satellite link to call up “that little thing” who was finally developing secondary sex characteristics. Once she heard what the Asian had to say, she puffed out her soft-looking cheeks.

“How could they do such a thing? This might just mean war.”

“No. No, it does not. What happened to that transfer student who advocated love and peace?”

“Anyone would give up on that after being pursued by a true monster like you Hidden Ones. Besides, I think it was what you two did that helped me mature most of all.”

The footage was unsteady, so she must have been walking around while holding a phone or tablet. She wore a fancy, shoulder-baring dress with a long skirt that spread out like an umbrella and she cheekily held the camera overhead to maintain her best angle.

“I’m acting based on careful thought here, so please don’t make a mess of my plans by wielding the long arm of a powerful nation,” said Sugiyado. “That will just mean another mess I have to clean up in secret.”

“Says the person who essentially rummaged through the armor decorating my mansion’s lobby. Still, I never thought that I would be hearing more about that incident now, even if it did create an eternal bond between us.”

“Yeah, neither did I.”

“Also, I never knew there was more to that incident we weren’t aware of. It feels like it sullies what I thought was our own lovely story. Yes, war is sounding better all the time. Maybe I should bring down that broadcast tower, the…New Yokohama Aeromonolith, was it?”

“Did I choose the wrong way to solve that problem back then!? Is this some form of delayed divine punishment!?”

He could not help but look fondly back on “that little thing” who had tugged on his clothes and called him “Nii-sama” based on some weird interpretation of Japanese culture she had picked up somewhere.

“Also, why are you so full of energy? There’s a time difference of more than 10 hours between our countries, so what are you doing up and moving around?”

“Oh, nothing. I just have somewhere I need to be, you silly fool.”

“Hm? Wait, please tell me I’m just being paranoid!”

She told him no such thing.

“I’m right heeeere☆”

Small arms hugged him from behind.

He had never expected her to make a surprise visit to the front line of the technological conflict between armored samurai and armored knights.

“I detected the repulsive odor of a dangerous conspiracy much like back then , so I decided to take a quick trip halfway around the globe with a ramjet engine. You should really praise me for being so worried for your wellbeing.”

Sugiyado Souha snapped not at the head of state but at her bodyguard knight.

“Are you insane!? Wipe that grin off your face!! Have you completely forgotten what happened in this country just a few years ago!?”

“Like I had a choice. The Kingdom is an absolute monarchy that believes in the divine right of kings. Parliament is just for show, so if the true head of the nation says to do something, then you’re playing strip rock-paper-scissors, dancing in the nude, or doing whatever else she asked of you. In this case, I had to put together and host a ninja tour for her.”

“Hey, honored guest, the queen of an entire country has risked her life to come play with you, so stop being shy,” said the queen in question. “Shouldn’t you be crumpling up your face and turning on the waterworks?”

“Oh, god. You really have changed, haven’t you!?”

“What, did you like me better the way I was? If you weren’t an honored guest, I would be pinching my skirt and stomping on you for that lack of decorum, but have it your way. I am prepared to comply with your perverted demands, Nii-sama .”

“Oh, shut up! Why don’t you realize that’s the problem right there!?”

He made the queen laugh while she intentionally peered up at him from below – which meant she was giving him a glimpse of her growing chest. When he shouted back at her to avoid some dishonorable false charges, something fell out of his pocket.

It was a long, skinny snack food wrapped like a piece of hard candy.

“Hm? What is this? …E-extra-hard Happy Churn???”

It truly was a stupendous product. He had snuck a few into his pocket when he saw an opening, but they had actually retained their beautiful oblong shape without breaking during all that intense fighting. Bravo, Happy Churn. They had not abandoned this ninja.

“Hold on, honored guest,” cut in John. “Do you have any idea how risky it was to bring unbreakable, and thus portable, Happy Churn out to sea like this!? Did you sell your soul to the devil on Dejima!? Is this really safe!? Gulp.”

“N-now, now. I am a forgiving queen, so if a commoner is offering me a gift, I would be willing to accept it to further our diplomatic and personal bonds. So hand it over. Yes, hand it over. (Glance, glance)”

“N-no, this isn’t a gift!”

Sugiyado tried to argue his case, but no one was listening.

He was saved by the disguised carrier ship’s communications technician.

The man pressed one side of the headphones to one ear as he turned back toward them. His gaze was on John instead of the little girl, so he may have decided it would be rude to speak directly to the queen without going through his superior officer first.

“We have received a report, Count. We have intercepted a radio transmission from the New Yokohama artificial island. After decrypting it, we found some information related to the honored guest.”

“Provide a summary.”

“Yes, sir.”

After speaking that word which carried a different weight when directed at a noble with a real court rank, the communications technician did as requested.

“Four ninjas who deserted from the local military have acquired some information at the New Yokohama Stock Exchange. They appear to be using that classified data to make some kind of deal with the higher ups. It is effectively blackmail.”

Sugiyado slapped a hand against his forehead.

“I warn them so much and those morons still feel the need to open that can of worms!?”

Now the Shogunate would be unable to back down even if they wanted to. They would be unable to rest until they had caught up to Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao and received their four heads on a platter.

Worse, this blackmail method meant they had ultimately failed to extract the shogunate data they had wanted from that stock exchange server. At most, they had found the proverbial lizard’s tail of that final mission. In poker terms, this was a bluff meant to apply pressure to an opponent. Yet they had placed their own lives on the scales in the process.

And it was all just so they could reclaim Sugiyado Souha’s life.

They had no proof at all that he was still alive, but they clung to the hope that he was and continued down the hopeless bloody path they had set for themselves.

“Could they be any more stupid!?”

“Don’t say that. This shows how much they care about you. Enough to trust for no reason that you would never die.” John chuckled and casually slapped Sugiyado’s shoulder. “We have been monitoring the situation ourselves. First the theft of a modular nuclear reactor, then the abduction of a dollhouse idol, and finally hacking into the mainframe of a stock exchange. Each of them was a shocking enough case to leave its mark in the annals of crime, yet they impressively harmed zero people in the process. They’re going out of their way to preserve your reputation. There were countless easier ways to go about this, but they intentionally restricted themselves and took the long way around. All to prove that you made no mistake when training them.”

“…”

He was briefly unsure how to respond to that.

He was weak, so he ultimately dodged the issue by focusing on the job at hand.

“But the Shogunate is bound to pick up on that soon. The profilers will have noticed how blatantly they’re avoiding any casualties.”

“Probably so. So do you think they’ll go for that method next time, or maybe the time after that?”

The little girl clinging to Sugiyado’s hip pouted her lips at that.

“The Shogunate, huh? I guess declaring war would be going too far, but maybe I should load John up with bombs and send him for a pleasant cruise above their capital. The pressure might be enough to slow down their reaction speed.”

“They might decide to settle their domestic issues ASAP so they can focus on the Kingdom instead. Violia, your presence is a little too powerful to use as a wakeup call. Anything you did would make predicting their next action nigh impossible, so please stay put.”

“Boo.”

“Please, Your Majesty.”

He patted her head while she clung to the side of his hip and then he spoke to the communication technician.

“Excuse me, mister. If possible, could you provide the details of the deal my idiot students are trying to work out?”

“Yes, sir, honored guest. The local military set up the details. They will meet in the B3 indoor plaza of New Yokohama Station’s Combined Underground Mall at 7:30 tonight. All further details will be discussed then.”

“That’s less than half an hour from now.”

“Plus, this is the evening rush hour. The station is sure to be flooded with businessmen headed home from work.”

That just about settled it. Just as John had suggested, the Shogunate intended to use that method. Ouka’s group would be wiped out with no hope of defending themselves. It was not an issue of skill – their un-ninja-like warmth would trip them up.

“But I doubt Guren or Suiren would choose to do that.”

“I have a report for our honored guest. The local military on New Yokohama artificial island appears to be sending out two sets of orders. It is extremely likely that they are commanding an official unit and another unit behind the scenes.”

“So they plan to leave Guren and Suiren in the dark and let them die along with Ouka’s group? All so they can end this as quickly as possible!?”

The queen tilted her head while clinging to Sugiyado’s hip.

“Um, what exactly is the problem here?”

“Ouka’s group is not willing to take innocent lives for their objective. That much is clear from their past actions,” spat out Sugiyado. Even he had killed that armored samurai to silence him and to help Shirazaya Guren and Suiren. “So the Shogunate only has to release poison gas or a biological weapon inside the station building during the evening rush hour. Even if Ouka’s group could escape on their own, they’re bound to stop and try to help the suffering people. They’ll know saving all of them is a futile task, but they’ll still draw out every last ounce of strength from their dying bodies to save as many as possible. Goddammit!!”

### 3: The Boy who Watered the Girl’s Seed

She had run out of time.

That was what had led Shizukuma Asagao to enter the ninja world.

In this age, everything was a meritocracy. If you had the knowledge and skills, you could skip ahead in school or even go straight to work, but that made things all the rougher for those who could not keep up. Simply studying the core subjects and going to college was not enough to get you anywhere. This was apparently the natural result of needing to secure a working population in an isolationist nation that refused to accept foreign laborers, but Asagao did not have a good feel for the specifics of the issue.

She had always grown bored with things quickly and never stuck with anything for long.

She had been something of a prodigy, but everyone was inundated with information these days. Even if you won an award or three, you were quickly forgotten by the general public.

And with a poor connection to her family, she had been cut off from the internal cycle as well.

Unable to accomplish anything, she had let time pass until the meritocracy’s time limit had arrived.

The public institutions required her to choose further education or a job.

Either way, she would be working for the nation’s benefit. The Shogunate officials had kicked her out of the room she had optimized for a lazy life and she had been more or less forced out into the world.

“That’s a real shame. If you had worked up your courage and spoken with your parents first, they might have been willing to help you out.”

If she had not met Sugiyado Souha then – albeit over the internet – her young mind may have been diluted and washed away by the great ocean out there.

“Well, maybe we ran into each other for a reason. I’ll teach you how to get by. Although this will be like teaching a sunflower how to survive in the shade.”

After so long without any human interaction, her tongue had grown rusty. She had found it hard to speak with anyone even through a screen. At the time, she had even had trouble judging how to approach her parents and convey her thoughts to them without introducing misunderstandings, but Sugiyado Souha had been patient with her. Even though someone on his level could easily have ended the remote interview and chosen a more talented candidate.

Why are you doing so much for me?

Her words had come out in intermittent bursts and she had been unsure if she was successfully communicating her question, but he had answered her all the same.

“No real reason. I chose you because you have your own unique charm. Well, just take your time and you’ll come to realize the world isn’t as apathetic to you as you think.”

He had allowed her a connection. He had said she had her own unique charm. It had been no more than a casual comment for him.

But it had definitely saved her.

Strangely, she had not grown bored of following him. Not all of it had been fun – if anything, he had been a strict teacher – but she had never once complained. She had shown no talent in direct combat wielding a sword or shuriken, but she had not given up after finding something she could not do for the first time in her life. She had instead asked herself what she could do and she had worked hard to hold her ground. She had learned how to dig in her heels and stick with something.

When he had given her the new name of Asagao, she had thought it did not suit her.

But he had told her to start with the name and learn to become a bright flower who could smile with anyone. She had realized it was not about if the name suited her now; it was about becoming someone who the name did suit.

Once she realized his thoughts behind that, she had come to understand something else too.

She found she was capable of grasping other people’s feeling. She no longer had trouble judging her distance from them. The rust had fallen from her tongue and lips. She could approach people the way everyone else did.

He was not as close to her as her parents, but he was not as distant as an adult.

Yes, so that small girl had started to think of him like a big brother.

“Okay.”

The bob cut girl slapped her extremely small face between the hands sticking out from her baggy sleeves to refocus herself.

“I refuse to believe that was enough to kill him.”

And she gave a smile that suited her name.

“Wait for us, Sensei. We’ll save you.”

### 4: PCB9

New Yokohama Domain had a few subway lines in addition to the major terminal station that connected to the giant bridge back to the mainland. The closer subway stations were linked to the large terminal station by underground corridors and plenty of shops had been built along those corridors. That meant the city sat above several subway stations linked on a scale and with a complexity beyond the norm. Some likened it to a house of tricks and it was a hotbed for rumors, like that it hid a secret nuclear shelter or a pure water pool for particle observation.

But there was one thing the people were unaware of.

The entire vast underground mall shared an air conditioning system, so infecting just one duct could quickly make the entire facility deadly. The civilians innocently believed they were being protected, so they never would have imagined the Shogunate might expose them to a biological weapon along with a rebellious criminal.

“!!”

After returning to New Yokohama Domain, Sugiyado Souha hid his mouth behind the largish scarf that helped block facial recognition before he ran through the city night and descended into one of the giant underground mall’s more than 30 entrances.

His earphone produced the concerned voice of John, an outsider. He was virtually sharing the boy’s eyes using his phone’s camera.

“H-hey, are you sure you don’t need any backup!? We’re talking about 200,000 people taken hostage! The queen has given me permission to join the fight, so wouldn’t it be best if you had some help?”

“Were you planning to charge into a crowded subway station during rush hour while wearing that huge thing? The Shogunate is hell bent on killing Ouka’s group to hide their secret. They’re willing to kill 200,000 innocent people and their own colleagues like Guren and Suiren to do it!”

“Don’t you have a bad feeling about this? It reminds me too much of what happened back then. I can’t get a read on anything and I can’t predict anything!”

“I’m saying they might flip the switch the instant they see someone as conspicuous as you there. So just sit tight and keep an eye on things from out there!!”

“I get it, goddammit! But don’t forget that you’re not alone. We’re on your side!!”

He did not respond to that one.

Because he was afraid trying to speak would let out a breath matching the shape of the smile on his lips.

That final mission had been hell, but maybe he had gained something from it.

(Now, then.)

The giant underground mall was like one big box, making it perfect for converting into a gas chamber. Since the air conditioning system was shared, infecting one duct would kill everyone there.

But it was not all bad. Risks and negatives were all in how you viewed them.

And ninjas lived in a different world from samurai and knights. More often than not, they were given infiltration and disturbance jobs while at a disadvantage. If your side had the upper hand to begin with, no one would turn to those who lurked in the shadows in the first place.

(This tells me the villain will only be after a single location. That means I won’t have to run all over this labyrinthine station disarming countless devices!)

“By the way, do you have any guesses what they will be using?” asked the queen over his earphone.

“PCB9. A toxic substance related to vision and the liver had its components pharmaceutically enhanced to create a colorless but strong-smelling poison gas weapon. The Shogunate officially stores 0mg of it, but they abuse a loophole in the various treaties by maintaining a lab that can manufacture it at any time. The actual ingredients are as common as can be and thus very cheap, so there is no concern of anyone detecting anything when they begin producing some. It has a death rate of about 55.8%. Once it gets inside an organism and accumulates, there is no hope of saving them but they will not die right away. Their liver function will drop over the course of a month and they can only lie around suffering until they finally breathe their last.”

It might sound like the other half would survive, but that was only technically true. Even if you were lucky enough to survive, you would face a life of hellish after effects. You would be bedridden forevermore and – to make matters worse – no one would suspect a thing if someone injected you with something in the hospital and your condition took a turn for the worse.

“I-I didn’t really expect you to have an answer. What makes you think they are using that?”

“First, I compared the candidates to the temperature, humidity, level of dust and other impurities in the air, expected distribution range, and other conditions of this particular attack. There were other poison gasses and biological weapons that fit the conditions, but like I said before, those would all be detected by foreign agencies while the Shogunate prepared them. There is no chance the Tuxedos of a #1 enemy state like the Kingdom would overlook it. Plus, PCB9 gives them an advantage when it comes to controlling the spread of the damage. There is no way to actually eliminate it, but since it accumulates in the fat, you can place animal fat along the borderline and have it soak up the toxin like a deodorizer. Without a safety measure like that, they would never use a chemical weapon in the middle of a city of a million, even if it’s separated from the mainland by the sea.”

“You make this all sound so simple, but that means you have the specs for hundreds or even thousands of poison gasses and viruses memorized, doesn’t it? You scare me sometimes.”

John kept a somewhat exasperated tone, but Sugiyado had to focus on his job right now.

There was only one possible target.

(The underground mall’s central heating.)

In order to cut down on energy usage, the underground mall did not install an air conditioner in each individual room. Instead, it used a single giant unit that sent air to the rest of the facility through ducts. Air was taken in through the many intake vents on the surface and it all passed through central heating before separating back out to the rest of the facility.

It was similar to the neck of an hourglass. If that one point was contaminated, everything else would be wiped out.

The central heating room’s location was not revealed to the public. Needless to say, that was because the normal visitors did not need to go there.

(But you can make a pretty good guess based on the layout and density of the ducts on the ceiling.)

“Oops.”

Just before running up some stairs, he came to a stop and faced a nearby drink vending machine.

Up ahead in the crowd, he had seen a pair of blonde twins in white dresses with red and white hair extensions swaying as they walked. Shirazaya Guren held a hand to her throat and Suiren toyed with her right ear. They appeared to be on their way to make a deal with Kuhou Ouka’s group. Sugiyado was officially missing in action, so running into them would cause problems he did not have time to deal with.

“Can’t you hide better than that?” asked Queen Violia who was artificially sharing his eyes using his phone. “Wouldn’t you be safer behind one of those columns?”

“That would make me more conspicuous. The crowd is the greatest form of cover, so as long as I don’t do anything suspicious, I can just go with the flow.”

Based on the duct layout, he was less than 50m from the central heating. He could already see the metal door labeled staff only that had a keypad next to the knob.

At times like this, he could not use smart cards that left a purchase record, but outdated methods had their advantages. He pulled his wallet from the pocket of his loose pants, inserted a few coins, and pushed the button for a soda while continuing his observations.

“They are pros too, aren’t they?” asked the queen. “Are you sure they will overlook you?”

“If you give up and turn around when the gap between buildings is too far to jump, you aren’t cut out to be a ninja. A pro will bring a rope or ladder with them to cross it.”

He crouched down and retrieved the can from the machine, but instead of standing back up, he gently rolled the unopened can below the machine. Finally, he nonchalantly stood back up and started following the flow of foot traffic.

“Nii-sama, they’re going to find you!”

“No, they aren’t.”

Vending machines used a lot of electricity since they had to keep so many products either heated or cooled. The large fan used to rid the machine of its heat would produce a fair amount of heat itself, so it was generally placed where no one would see it but also in an outwards-facing position where the air could cool it.

Also, canned drinks – especially carbonated ones – would explode when overheated.

So what would happen if an unopened can was lodged up against the motor attached below the vending machine to turn the fan?

He heard a muffled and wet boom.

“?”

“Over there.”

He only had to get both sisters to look in a certain direction. Similar to pressing against the opposite side of a revolving door, he slipped past the twins in military-looking white dresses while staying only a few meters behind them.

This was an underground mall full of people, not a strictly-guarded fortress. There might be trouble here, but it would not raise the alert level unless it could be proven to be related to their job. There was more to being a ninja than wielding swords and shurikens in stealthy battles.

There was now no one between him and the staff-only door to the central heating.

In his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, he casually held a hand to his earphone.

“At close range, they might detect my transmissions. You won’t hear anything from me once I go inside, but don’t panic.”

“Got it. We will be using a different route to monitor things.”

(This is NR East, so all the extra locks are done by Saitou Security. This model looks like a 34-B, so I need a direct link to the red and yellow.)

There might as well not have been a lock. Anyone who encountered a keypad and tried to search out the correct series of digits was not cut out to be a ninja. He pulled a Fierce Fang from his back, stuck the tip in the gap between the keypad and the door, used leverage to break it open, connected the internal wires to his phone, and forced open the electronic lock. It only took him three seconds, so it did not even look like he was standing there working on something.

“…”

He cracked open the door and slipped inside. The room beyond was dark and full of traps. Not even he could directly see IR lasers, but he could see the stamp-sized mirrors attached all over.

Several pieces of machinery were surrounded by metal fences and thick pipes connected them together. The central heating maintenance hallway was like a spider web woven of unseen light. Touching even one strand would inform the villain of his presence. That might even lead them to hasten their timetable and use the PCB9 poison gas weapon right away.

But on the other hand, the lasers controlled by those mirrors could only travel in straight lines. If he read the angles of the mirrors, he could tell which way the lasers were being reflected.

“Sh.”

He let out a light breath and performed an acrobatic flip. His largish scarf fluttered after him as he sometimes jumped and sometimes rolled to dance nimbly through the invisible spider web without making a noise.

(Setting it up to distribute the gas wouldn’t take long, so a trap of this scale suggests they were ordered to wait here until receiving the go-ahead.)

Once inside, he sensed a presence.

In his short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, Sugiyado pressed up against a piece of metal larger than a small truck and viewed the scene further in. He already held a Fierce Fang in his hand.

“…”

There was indeed someone there.

That someone was curled up with their back to him and they wore a hooded coat. They were small, but he could not tell if they were a boy or a girl.

The rectangular maintenance hatch for the central heating was located nearly at the floor on the wall and the screws in the four corners had been removed to pop off the cover. A metal cylinder the size of a 2L drink bottle stuck out of the attaché case next to the hatch. It did not have any obvious labels, but that had to be it. Once the valve was opened either based on a timer or a remote signal, the PCB9 would enter the duct and spread throughout the entire underground mall. That would infect the 200,000 ordinary people using the multiple subway stations, the twin sisters Guren and Suiren, as well as Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

He had no detailed information about the dissemination container.

If it was triggered with the movement of a fingertip or of the eyes, then throwing a single Fierce Fang would be a risky gamble. How could he safely eliminate this enemy? How could he switch off their life without letting them scream or even dilate their pupils? His ability to rationally analyze this showed that, as much as he cared for those on his side, he could never work as a guardian of the law or ally of the people who worked out in the open. And that was fine with him. He remained behind cover and wracked his brain, but then he heard a familiar voice.

It came from the radio sitting next to the enemy.

He realized the building layout showed the meetup point for the deal being directly below this central heating room. PCB9 was colorless but had a distinctive odor, so it was not difficult for people to realize something was wrong. Had this enemy set up a bug or camera so they could wait until the four kunoichis were too deep in to escape once the attack was triggered?

He doubted this was simply insurance in case Guren and Suiren lost. There was no hesitation or concern in the posture of that figure with their back turned. They clearly intended to use this no matter what.

He focused on the voices coming from the radio.

They most likely belonged to Kuhou Ouka and Shirazaya Guren.

Or maybe it was Suiren.

“The Shogunate’s dogs actually bothered to show up to talk it out? They must really not want the data on that storage to get out.”

“Sigh. He sounded so confident, so why does none of this have anything to do with the mint’s printing press? And let’s not get carried away. The higher ups told us what is going on here. Given the encryption method used, it would take 30 years to crack even using all the country’s supercomputers connected in parallel over high-speed lines. Maybe you did fish up a sunken ship, but you did not know how to unlock the treasure chest within. So you decided to threaten us to learn what was inside. Isn’t that right?”

“If you were that confidant we couldn’t get in, you wouldn’t have responded to our request for negotiations. The Shogunate is scared. Maybe all this country’s supercomputers can’t crack it open, but what if we took it to another country? What if we handed this over to the Kingdom waiting out at sea and in the air? Whatever their overall technology level, they should have an overwhelming lead when it comes to population and manpower. And thus the total number of computers they can use in parallel.”

“If you had any such connections, you would not have made this kind of demand in the first place.”

“Oh, really? But if we need connections, we can always make new ones. Remember, kunoichis like us excel at both combat and manipulating people.”

Sugiyado silently graded that a 60. Inspiring emotions in someone was indeed a ninja technique, but to do that, Ouka would first have to know what emotions she needed to draw out in order to succeed.

If she was only making her opponent angry because they could not perform at their best after losing their cool, then she was still unsure what she wanted to do here. Doing that could give your opponent the opening they needed to manipulate you instead.

“Hee hee.”

“Is something funny?”

“Oh, just that you don’t seem to have heard anything at all. I imagine it was Sugiyado Souha who taught you to act like that. If so, he might just be charged with criminal instigation, or maybe even as the mastermind behind it all.”

“He was retried and you’re the ones that dragged him back into it all!!”

If he were not so close to the enemy, he might have clicked his tongue. In a single move, the twin had turned everything around quite impressively. She must have known about Ouka’s psychological weak point from the beginning.

“He told us you were after the mint’s printing press, but this changes everything. Sugiyado Souha’s students were acting on his behalf to restore his honor. If we view this as an act of the Sugiyado Ninja School, there isn’t much room to defend him, is there?”

“You couldn’t even protect him.”

“?”

“You used him for your own purposes and then abandoned him to that tragedy on the rooftop! Listen, if anything did happen to him, I swear I’ll use that modular nuclear reactor to blow up the Tenshukaku, the very center of the Shogunate!!”

“Oh, you seem awfully shaken for someone making such a bold threat. You fear he could never have survived that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I get it all right. I get that leaving our precious teacher with coldhearted monsters like you will only get him used like a tool and then thrown out. And I get that you could never understand how we feel!!”

“What did you just say?”

The tides were turning.

Don’t get all heated up when you’re the host, thought Sugiyado with a cringe at the twin’s reaction.

“We used him like a tool and threw him out? We did nothing of the sort!! We have a duty to treat our cooperators right. Once we take them onto our team, we treat them like family and we rely on each other! So we could see just how much pressure your actions were placing on his shoulders. Yet he still never made a single complaint. He carried it all himself, wearing himself down in the process. All because you felt the need to cause trouble!!”

“Enough. Bara, Hoozuki, prepare for battle. Asagao, you provide support. We’ll kick their asses and swipe the answer from their pocket!”

“Now we’re talking. It seems neither of us actually suspect he is dead, so we must arrest you and reclaim the life he had. Suiren!!”

But he could not bring himself to outright reject what they were saying.

On one side, Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

On the other, Shirazaya Guren and Suiren.

They were willing to speak from the heart when it came to him and even grab their weapons despite knowing that was not the smartest move. He reflected deeply on the fact that he was blessed with so many people like that.

How could he let them die here?

He no longer cared about reclaiming his honor. He had no desire he was willing to trample someone else to fulfill. But this was different. He swore to himself he would protect these girls who were standing up and crossing blades for him.

The villain had heard all of this as well, and they held a hand to their ear while still curled up. They were probably contacting someone with their earphone. They must have received some kind of sign because their back shook a bit, as if in laughter.

“Heh.”

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha threw three Fierce Fang air-pressure kunais toward that back.

One toward the back of the head, one toward the spine, and one toward the heart.

All three targets showed no mercy. No matter how dangerous this person in the hooded coat was, this was guaranteed to pierce their vitals. The power of nitrogen would produce 15 tons of pressure to shred whatever the kunais had embedded themselves in.

He revealed his skill in the modern ninja techniques known as Strategic Martial Arts, which had been developed to fight the foreign elites arriving by air and by sea.

Or it looked like he had.

The coat should have been reduced to shreds, yet it flew intact through the air. And the supposedly slain target was not bleeding at all. The scar on Sugiyado’s nose bent.

(A substitution!?)

The torn coat remained upright and seemingly filled with a body, so it was likely made with shape memory alloy, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, or electric potential elastic fibers.

To fool an extraordinary Hidden One so fully meant this had to be at least a High Ninja, if not even higher than that.

He heard a footstep from overhead.

They were dropping rapidly toward him.

But his immediate reaction was not toward the attacker from above. It was toward the central heating machinery surrounding him.

If the PCB9 container was unsealed and the gas entered the ducts through the opened maintenance hatch, 200,000 people would be infected. And his students and the twins were part of that number.

So he did not need to think twice.

“!!”

He spun around in a breath.

He threw more than five Fierce Fangs in all directions and used the nitrogen to critically spread apart and destroy the wiring, circuit boards, and other Achilles’ heels of the facility. Bright sparks erupted all over and the machinery fell silent.

But he did not have time to observe his handiwork.

He had neglected the assassin directly above him and it was too late to react now. He rolled blindly to the side, but he still felt scorching pain across his back. Something had cut him through his short-sleeved dress shirt. The wound was shallow, but undeniable.

Blood dripped to the floor.

He grimaced at that fact more than the pain. Just like with the air-pressure kunais he had thrown, he had to update his mental list of evidence he would have to erase.

At the same time, he heard a noise similar to compressed air bursting out. He saw the sides of the large metal cylinder peel away to reveal small holes in something like a polka dot pattern.

Something colorless floated out like sugar being stirred into water, but it showed no sign of being absorbed into the boxy duct. He had just barely stopped the central heating in time.

“Not bad.”

That quick comment came from someone standing about 5m ahead of him. They wore a black leather suit and an octopus-like gasmask that covered their face. Their gender was still a mystery. The long brown hair and curvy figure made him think girl, but in this world, he could not deny the possibility of them having padding within the leather suit.

That meant he had no idea who this was.

He did not recognize them and nothing looked familiar.

But that did not speak poorly of their skills. In fact, being unknown was a status symbol in the ninja world. The “legendary ninjas” like Hattori or Kirigakure, who were famous enough to be answers on TV quiz shows, were usually ninjas who had lost their ability to fight and had the Shogunate sell off their personal information. Meanwhile, the unknown ninjas were the ones the Shogunate wanted to keep hidden. It may have been similar to the difference between Elite Ninjas like Ouka’s group who stood at the top of the ranking but whose total numbers were known and the Hidden Ones like Sugiyado Souha whose numbers were a mystery.

Did that mean this was another Hidden One?

Or was there some other exceptional category other than that?

Either way, they were top rate.

And this was the hellish front line where the extraordinary could be found anywhere. This was not a training facility where the difficulty was adjusted to an amateur’s level. Whoever this was, he had to fight them now that they had encountered each other.

“But are you sure that was a good idea? All you did was transfer the PCB9 from a big box to a smaller one. There’s no hope for you without a mask like this one. Was this really worth getting sliced up by my Piercing Web?”

“That is for me to decide,” spat out Sugiyado while pulling another Fierce Fang from the back of his torn and red-stained shirt.

This would soon be a world carrying a silent 55.8% chance of death. He would be fighting a deadly battle while also sharing a room with an invisible grim reaper.

### 5: A Battle Outside the Ranking System

To be entirely clear, the faceless ninja’s goal was not to drive back Sugiyado Souha and escape safely.

He or she needed to eliminate Kuhou Ouka and the other three on the floor below. Even if that meant putting Shirazaya Guren, Suiren, and 200,000 ordinary people in harm’s way.

So…

(I stopped the central heating, but largescale infrastructure like this is bound to have backup power. At this rate, it will turn back on and ruin everything!!)

That was the focal point of this battle.

They had to run around the large but labyrinthine central heating room while one tried to turn the power back on and the other tried to take out the backup power as well. Whoever achieved their goal first would win.

“Heh heh.”

A muffled laugh left the gasmask.

Something crawled behind them.

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha ducked his head while running. Something sliced by directly overhead and a straight diagonal line of sparks flew along the thick metal machinery next to him.

(A wire?)

His instincts told him that.

This was someone skilled enough to pull off a substitution technique by filling their coat with shape memory alloy, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, or electric potential elastic fibers.

But his knowledge rejected that idea.

The gasmask ninja was being too careless about their own route for this place to be laid out with taut wires. Running the way they were would have gotten them tangled up in no time.

Then what was this trap strung up across the room? Steel wires too thin to see with the naked eye would be the most obvious solution, yet all he saw were…

Light and mirrors.

In other words…

“Is your Piercing Web made from laser scalpels and ultra-fine heat-resistant optical fiber!?”

As soon as he figured it out, the storm of invisible blades rushed toward him from all directions.

Several laser emitters extended from their back like octopus or squid tentacles to aim freely in any direction around them. And if these were little more than ordinary laser scalpels, they could be reflected like normal with high luminance mirrors. Yet these were still surgical tools. If they targeted the thick blood vessels in the limbs or neck, they could slice through them as easily as a normal blade, leading to heavy blood loss.

(No, I bet this was originally anti-electronic warfare equipment that overheated the ninja outfits that protect their wearer using their spider silk structure and computer-controlled adjustments.)

Cutting-edge ninja outfits could shrug off exposure to some flames, but if the heat was focused on a single point, it might be enough to destroy the computer chips.

Sugiyado could not see the IR beams.

And even if he could, his body could not keep up with a weapon that approached at the speed of light.

Unlike a normal wire, these could be switched on and off, so this enemy could move around freely without having to worry about being caught in their own trap.

That left Sugiyado with only his knowledge as the key to this fight.

He would have to read the position and angles of the laser emitters and the mirrors to predict the reflected path of the Piercing Web and dodge based on that.

“You’re pretty good!”

He did not need to respond to that praise. The two of them continued running while he threw a Fierce Fang.

Sparks immediately flew.

A laser sweeping through the air had hit the polished side of the air-pressure kunai and it had been reflected wildly. The gasmask ninja had not seen this coming, so they shrank down a bit.

It had taken more than the sparkle of the blade to do that.

The nitrogen gas used to open the kunai had locally altered the composition of the air and distorted the transmittance.

“Tch!!”

Meanwhile, Sugiyado threw a few Fierce Fangs in directions other than the gasmask ninja and used the nitrogen’s 15 tons of force to sever the wiring for the central heating’s backup power. He had remained focused on his objective. He had worked to stop the PCB9 more than ensure his own safety.

“You did that in your spare time!?”

“By the way,” he cut in. “The central heating is a very large piece of infrastructure used to manage the temperature of the entire giant underground mall. How exactly do you think it manages that?”

He changed direction and threw an air-pressure kunai to the side, still ignoring the gasmask ninja whose tentacle-like weapons were moving behind their back.

And he gave his answer.

“By consuming a hell of a lot of fuel.”

A mass of metal to his side suddenly swelled out and exploded, sending jagged metal and flames toward the gasmask ninja.

The damage to all the equipment and pipes must have allowed the central heating’s fuel to leak out.

“Aaaagh!?”

The gasmask ninja was blasted to the metal fence on the other side of the room, but Sugiyado was not going to let them escape now. He grabbed a new Fierce Fang in each hand and used the dark smoke to rush toward his target unseen.

He jabbed the tip of one Fierce Fang below their chin and pulled up to pry the gasmask from their face.

Based on his first impression of their face, this appeared to be a beautiful boy. So was the figure showing through the leather suit faked using padding?

“!?”

The assassin’s entire body visibly tensed. After all, this area was infected with his own poison gas. Even a faceless ninja would feel their throat go dry with fear.

Sugiyado hoped this would be enough to stop him.

But when he instead saw one of the tentacles moving behind the boy, he immediately stabbed his two air-pressure kunais into the side and chest of the leather suit.

“Obh!? Ugweehhhhh!!”

“Quit exaggerating. If that’s government issue, it’s spider silk and can stop a rifle bullet. But if you insist, I can open it up with my kunai’s nitrogen. Open your body up, that is. I’m honestly having trouble figuring out why I shouldn’t.”

Of course, even if the bullet could not pierce the suit, it could not fully absorb the shock and that would hit the body within.

Perhaps it was like pressing a flat-ended ruler against your stomach and trying to place your full weight on it.

“Kah, cough, cough!!”

Unable to bear it, the ninja slid down onto his butt while still leaning back against the fence.

“Th-there’s something wrong with you. This is PCB9. At your level, you must know what it can do! Breath it in and your liver stops functioning. Except it takes a full month while you watch all your skin turn yellow! How is this not freaking you the hell out!?”

“If panicking could change the reality around you, I would become a shaman who can enter trances at will.” Sugiyado sighed. “PCB9 generally enters through the mouth and gathers in your fat before the negative effects spread to your eyes and liver. So as long as you do something about the breathing part, you can survive. Just like you tried to protect yourself with that gasmask.”

“Yeah, but you destroyed-” The assassin stopped midsentence. “Hold on. You’re kidding, right?”

“I will only explain this once, so if you want to live, work your brain cells overtime to learn how to breathe. Got that?”

“What’s your price? I know you’re not going to save an enemy for nothing in return! Tell me!!”

“You will be telling me everything you know about the backup plan in case this one fails. Now, if you want to die that badly, you can pay me up front, but are you sure you want to delay this any longer?”

- ↑ Asagao is the Japanese name of the morning glory flower.

### 007. Chapter 5

### 1: A Flower Garden in the Depths of Hell

Perhaps it was fortunate that PCB9 was a poison gas and not a biological weapon that could self-replicate from a small leak, expanding the infected area indefinitely.

Sugiyado wiped up his blood and retrieved his kunais. The gas could escape when he opened the door, so he would have to go to the effort of setting up a dual-layer barrier with plastic tarps, but it was not enough to trap him in this room.

After retrieving the empty container that had holes in its side, he ground to a halt like jammed gears.

“Kh.”

(With my clothes, my gear, and the empty gas container, I’m just past my first limit. It’s probably about 6.5kg.)

At 5kg, his back felt weird. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He could not forget that passing the next limit would mean dropping his weapons and writhing in pain regardless of his surroundings.

(But I’m not there yet!)

“H-hey,” said the former gasmask ninja with a stiff smile. “What am I supposed to do?”

“If you don’t want to throw away the life I saved, then bind your arms and legs with these zip ties and stuff yourself in a coin locker. You should fit in the large lockers for suitcases if you fold up your limbs.”

“Are you insa-…um, I mean, I’ll see what I can do. Y-you’d better come get me soon, okay?”

After giving Sugiyado a look, the boy completed the necessary work, so Sugiyado locked the locker, removed the key, and placed a hand on his earphone with blood soaking the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

“John, no more need for radio silence from me. Can you hear this?”

“Took you long enough! So how’d it go!? There was apparently an explosion and the customers are flooding out!!”

“I stopped the central heating itself, but the room was contaminated. The seal is holding, but this is still a battlefield. Something could break the airtight seal at any time. John, do what you can to keep people away from this area. I’m counting on you!!”

“Any other requests?”

“I set up a cleaning sign in front of the door, but an overzealous employee still might take a peek inside. The Kingdom has some people on this island, right? Can you get any of them to secretly decontaminate the place? They’ll have to get there fast to beat the brave police or firefighters there.”

“I know you wouldn’t ask a favor of me unless you really needed it, so don’t worry about a thing. I’ll get it done.”

“I also secured the empty container wrapped in plastic. I doubt it will matter, but it’s still evidence. The Shogunate is behind this, so handing it over to them would only get it destroyed. I’ll hand it over to you along with the culprit I captured, okay?”

“Fine, but you’re talking about someone who attempted mass murder against their own people. You’re handing us one hell of a good diplomatic bargaining chip. It’s like a joker you can use over and over.”

“Anything’s fine with me as long as we can take out the idiot at the very top who approved this. Do whatever it takes to apply pressure on that bureaucratic advisor. And keep it up until it seems better to abandon that explosive official than to cover this up for them.”

“I see. But there’s more to this than simple harassment, isn’t there?”

“This will never end unless it’s stopped at the source, but I’m only one person. I can’t reach the true source myself. …But if they fall from power and are booted from the national system, I can pay them a visit in the wild darkness.”

“Heh. Ha ha. Doesn’t that count as inciting a foreign threat? So even if you take the head of your direct superior, you can still find a way around it, huh? You really are a ninja!”

“We’re not like knights. And don’t forget to check over the scene before decontaminating it. …I’ll be going now. I need to get to the heart of this issue soon.”

“So you’re joining that youthful catfight, huh? Reminds me of my teenage years.”

“I’m hanging up.”

Unfortunately, the battle was not yet over. His students and the twins had continued their deadly battle while he was stopping the spread of the poison gas and he could not allow any of them to receive a fatal wound. And with the other customers and the employees evacuating after the explosion, those girls no longer had to worry about having any eyes on them. Things were bound to be bad there.

He silently descended the stairs to reach the B3 plaza where the deal was to have taken place.

That large space could be used for public events. It looked large enough for a basketball game. The ceiling was tall and supported by evenly-spaced rectangular pillars. A bronze statue of a naked woman stood near the center, but the statue and its pedestal must have been movable to clear room for events.

And now.

That entire space had devolved into chaos.

Explosive flames and a flurry of steel poured down. This was now a battlefield too intense to seem real.

### 2: Chance Meeting

––On one side were his students Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

The ninja outfits they all wore were designed to be practical while also supplying an alluring sex appeal.

The most conspicuous of them was their direct fighter Ouka, who wore a bodysuit that showed off her undeveloped figure, a white sleeveless kimono top, a long front and back skirt, and a red rope that hung down from the back of her hips like a cat tail.

That twintail kunoichi twirled around Midnight Tempest, a vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun with a bayonet and a binoculars-like multipurpose site attached. The blade-shaped gadget erupted with fire like a flamethrower and that fury took the form of a tornado around her.

No, that was more than just fire. She sometimes used explosive flames of more than 2000 degrees and sometimes used liquid nitrogen of less than -195 degrees to create a double tornado around her.

Still, the light filling the entire plaza was unnaturally intense.

That was thanks to the secret efforts of Bara, the redhaired ringlet curls girl who specialized in disguises and camouflage. She wore a body suit plus an oiran-style kimono top that exposed her shoulders and cleavage, and used the hanging sash in place of a front skirt, but that ninja outfit danced in the air as she moved now. She was probably scattering lead or zinc powder from her hair tubes. She called that weapon Pressurized Light. Metal powder with a low melting point was scattered around and the residual heat of the flames would paint it across the floors and pillars like a mirror. From there, the mirrors would control the light much like the board reflectors in a photo studio.

Based on that, it was clear that the bright and conspicuous flames were no more than a smokescreen.

From a step behind, Nantou Hoozuki, a girl with a silver ponytail and with an open-back one-piece swimsuit and baggy pants, broke through the wall of fire, arched her lithe back, strained the belts binding her body, and moved her shoulder blades to launch large shurikens at a rate of more than 3000 a minute using the pitching machine she had created by transforming her off-road motorcycle named Countless Calamities. Her combination cross shurikens could fold up like a pair of scissors, so they functioned like a cross shuriken when open and like a stick shuriken when closed.

Seeing through to that attack was very impressive.

But the true grim reaper’s scythe was sneaking up on the twin sisters from an unseen and unheard location.

Sugiyado Souha’s focus landed not on the direct fighter, but on the small bob-cut girl wearing a bleached white military uniform with a short tight skirt.

(Asagao’s their commander. She does love hiding her claws and feigning powerlessness.)

Kuhou Ouka was moving her lithe and growing body like a rhythmic gymnast or a figure skater to alternately use hellfire of more than 2000 degrees or liquid nitrogen of less than -200 degrees. The intense temperature difference created a drastic fluctuation in atmospheric pressure, which would likely help create a vacuum blade.

But that was not its purpose.

The final weapon was an impurity. It was really only specks of nitrogen oxide that would generally be called soot, but by placing it in that artificially heated wind and rapidly accelerating it, it could take out people’s senses in a different way from a vacuum blade. Anyone would notice the instant their eyes were taken out, but what about their ears or nose? If their effectiveness was reduced without your knowledge, it could cause a fatal delay in how long it took you to notice the next attack coming.

(I doubt even Ouka can see the minute impurities she’s wielding. Asagao must be monitoring the airflow while separated from the direct fighting, so she can move her limbs or clothing around to fan the nitrogen oxide in. Impressive teamwork.)

––On the other side were Shirazaya Guren and Suiren. Those kunoichi twins let their beautiful blonde hair flutter behind them along with their pure white sleeveless kimono tops and pleated miniskirts.

Chain links could be heard scraping together.

“Randomize the Steel Rope’s path.”

“Understood, Guren.”

The identical girls wielded ninja swords, kusarigamas, and stick shurikens. With ABS and polycarbonate, there were plenty of nonmetal materials that could withstand use in combat, but they had a good reason for using well-tempered steel for every last weapon.

They bent.

They curved.

(Steel Rope. Are they using magnetism? No, is it the Lorentz force!?)

They were likely scattering microscopic iron sand to give electricity a path through. While the twin sisters danced in perfect unison, they only had to throw out the kusarigamas or stick shurikens and they would fly along impossible paths, sometimes even turning at acute angles. Their straight, noncurved ninja swords also raged about with an accuracy that ignored the girls’ skeletal structures, muscular strength, and centers of gravity. The blades seemed to move with a mind of their own to guide their wielders to victory.

Sparks flew.

The combination cross shurikens were 5 or 6 times the weight of an anti-materiel bullet and should have been impossible to dodge under normal circumstances, but the twins repeatedly knocked them from the air, creating blossoms of sparks. Shizukuma Asagao was sending in nitrogen oxide as a sense-numbing grim reaper’s scythe, but even that was blown away all at once by the wind produced when a kusarigama roared around like a tornado.

Sometimes it was from the sides, sometimes it was from the front and back, and sometimes it was from above and below.

Shirazaya Guren and Suiren used their steel weapons to surround and isolate one of the four and either tore into them or made repeated minute movements to aim for the best timing.

Both sides were extremely skilled.

They had beautifully mastered the Strategic Martial Arts of the modern ninja. If they used that power for good, how many people’s smiles could they protect? Just as the design of a nation’s weapons was linked to its dignity, these state-commanded kunoichis perfectly combined practical skill and aesthetic beauty as they danced in combat.

Which was why it would be such a shame if any of them were needlessly lost here.

He could not let that happen.

And beyond that direct battle, he also had to consider the contaminated central heating room directly above this B3 plaza. The Shogunate had left behind deadly claw marks in their desperate attempt to end all this by any means necessary. If this ninja fighting grew too intense and the ceiling collapsed, the sealed PCB9 poison gas weapon would be a threat once more.

“I won’t let anyone trample on Sensei’s honor. I will reclaim him from you Shogunate dogs!!”

“Why don’t you understand that selfish decision will only destroy his current career as an instructor!?”

“Don’t you dare suggest that!”

“Don’t make me laugh, little girl. Did you really think you were the ones working in Sugiyado Souha’s best interest!?”

Even now.

Even after all this.

None of them were bad people. His students had done all this to learn the truth and the enforcers of justice had only tried to protect him by stopping it all.

He felt thankful.

He was so very, very thankful, but he still felt like it was not enough thanks.

The next move was bound to take a life on one side or the other, so now was the time.

He had to protect them, even if it put his life at risk. It did not matter what it broke within him. It was the same as that final mission, so he did not care if people thought he had not learned a thing since then.

No matter who he had to fool, he could not forget what truly mattered.

Simply put, he had to save every last person on both sides!!

In a split second, a ninja who had lost his wings soared down the stairs and onto the front line.

“What!? Sensei!?”

“Sugiyado-san!!”

In one hand, he held a Fierce Fang air-pressure kunai. In the other, a thick gas container. He forcibly moved between them and caught the bayonet and kusarigama blades that should have crossed in their pursuit of each other’s vitals.

A hand each was not enough.

If he tried to compete with them directly, he would be overpowered. He knew the limit on his spine was an illusion created by his brain, but he could not shake free of those self-imposed bonds.

“Kh, ohhhhhh!!”

So he deflected them instead. He spun like a whirlwind and had the two blade-wielding girls pass each other by like they were pressed against opposite sides of a revolving door.

That was the most he could manage.

After stopping that one exchange of deadly slashes, his momentum got the better of him and he slammed back-first into a nearby column. The impact knocked the breath out of him and he slid down to the floor while turning his eyes toward the girls.

First, Kuhou Ouka.

Good. She had no obvious injuries. The fact that her eyes widened on a pale face was worrying, but contradictorily, he was also glad to see she had not changed.

Next, Hanasawa Bara.

He was relieved by what he saw there too. Her mind must have been spinning with questions of how it had come to this and where they had gone wrong. Even though he had told her time and again to quit that since those questions did not help her do better next time.

Then, Nantou Hoozuki.

She was fine too. Only she thought of herself as expressionless because the light wavering in her eyes was highly expressive of her emotions. He wanted to tell her she did not need to feel so shaken right now.

Finally, Shizukuma Asagao.

Good. She was fine too. As much as she liked to play the knowledgeable strategist, she was still the smallest girl and could not actually fight. He had been worried a stray bullet might have found her, but she appeared unharmed.

And.

From the twins, Shirazaya Guren.

He was relieved to see she was uninjured. He had been in charge of those girls, so she could have blamed him for their actions. But she had instead seen him as a companion working on the case together and she had even grown furious on his behalf. Even though she had to be living in much worse conditions than him.

And the second twin, Shirazaya Suiren.

She was fine. She should not have had any real reason to support someone she had just met the other day. She should have prioritized her own conditions, but next thing he knew, here she was. He was actually worried that this side of her personality would lead to her taking on more of a burden than she should. That would be nothing but a negative influence on her life, yet she was almost certainly proud of what she was doing.

“…”

He had trouble breathing and felt close to passing out.

There was not much he could say right away, but if he said nothing at all, they would likely resume their meaningless fight to the death.

So he leaned his bloody back against the column, held the poison gas canister close, and gasped for breath while forcing out what mattered most.

“Stop this! Keep this up and you’ll die!!”

Both sides briefly came to a stop.

No, for a brief moment, Kuhou Ouka and Shirazaya Guren and Suiren’s killer intent was diverted elsewhere.

“Who do you think we’re doing this for in the first place!? And whose side are you on anyway!!!???”

Ugh, thought Sugiyado Souha.

How did I find myself in this mess?

That was obvious enough.

They were all endlessly kind people, so this was the natural result when they set foot into the world of ninjas.

He knew that.

He understood it.

He just about laughed, so he tensed his face and worked to maintain his consciousness that had nearly been shredded by pain.

This was not over yet.

Now was not the time.

He did not care how many bolts he had in his spine or what he had in his legs to replace his torn ligaments. At 5kg, his spine felt odd. At 10kg, he could no longer fight. But so what? Now was not the time for him to collapse. He could not let it end here. He had to hold onto his consciousness and recall everything that had been built up thus far. All so he could protect those foolish but kind girls.

“Ouka.”

“Y-yes!?”

“Guren and Suiren too.”

“What…do you want?”

Both sides turned toward him when he spoke in a scratchy voice. They almost looked like classmates in the same classroom in this moment.

And he vaguely felt like that might not be a bad future for them.

Which was all the more reason to keep his words ice cold now.

“Put your weapons away, you utter morons. There is no reason for you to throw your lives away over something so stupid.”

The girls’ powerful emotions started to shrivel at his scolding words, but then he distinctly sensed them flare back up. They readied their weapons, creating a series of quiet metallic tones. But he had planned for this. He had known no one who made it this far would be broken by a single statement.

So he silently apologized to them from the bottom of his heart.

He had intentionally trapped them in this. He had dragged them toward unavoidable battle when they might have been able to turn back had they tried.

There was no turning back now.

Fighting was the only option.

But that fighting would not take the form of the lovely girls working to kill each other.

Their wordless rejection creating a piercing atmosphere.

After feeling that wash over him, he tossed aside the special container and held a hand forward while still seated with his back against the column.

This was like that final mission all over again. He was taking on too great a burden and he was clearly going to crash and burn for it.

But that was fine with him.

He pulled back his index finger and winked.

The instructor announced the beginning of a special lesson.

“If you’ve got a problem with that, then come at me as a group. You idiots are not easy to teach, I’ll tell you that.”

### 3: An All-Out Battle Begins

He had known negotiations would break down.

They had all come here because they had something they refused to compromise on, so fighting was the only option. Crossing blades with them was the only way to respect their respective feelings to the fullest.

“…”

The girl in front of him inhaled and exhaled.

She showed off her undeveloped figure in a bodysuit, a sleeveless kimono top, and a front and back skirt.

That was Kuhou Ouka.

She kept her eyes on Sugiyado Souha who could not even stand up, but she suddenly aimed Midnight Tempest to the side.

She was targeting a kunoichi whose ninja outfit included a pleated miniskirt, giving it a combination of Japanese and Western styles. This one had a red hair extension.

That was Shirazaya Guren.

“!?”

With a boom, the merciless gunshot was blocked by a ninja sword guided by Steel Rope and the blonde kunoichi with small throat trembling nearly toppled over from the impact on her weapon.

While bending the gun to load a new round, twintailed Ouka made an announcement.

“Bara, Hoozuki…and Asagao. Work with me.”

“Wait, are you really doing this!? We’re talking about Sensei here!”

“Words won’t get us anywhere here. He’s as dead set on his course as we are ours, so we can’t make any progress without tearing down this wall. Isn’t that right, Sensei?”

Just as he smiled, vertically-stacked double-barreled Midnight Tempest produced a storm of flames that scorched the entire column he was leaning against.

But which side truly deserved the praise here?

There was no mass of carbon writhing in pain within those flames. Only a few light sounds. How in the world had he moved from his seated position leaning against the column? The next thing they knew, he had flown up to the top of the column and in fact was clinging upside down to the ceiling. Needless to say, he was not burned or even singed.

He could not carry a single injured companion, so his nimble movements were his one point of pride.

Ouka’s surefire attack had been easily avoided, but she smiled while her sleeveless kimono top and front skirt fluttered around her. She had the look of someone seeing a demotivated boxer climb back into the ring.

“You’re the best, Sensei!!” she roared.

She fired more flames, but none of them could find him. With light sounds, he set foot on the side of a different column and ran straight down to the ground.

At this point, the other ninjas were done hesitating. However it happened, they would fail to reach their goal if they were defeated here. That obvious fact had finally gotten through to them.

Kuhou Ouka flexibly moved her growing body to use bayonet-equipped Midnight Tempest as a blade and a gun. In addition to simple bullets, she used paintball-like capsule cartridges containing powerful acid or high-voltage capacitors. Combined with the unit that could fire ignited rocket fuel or liquid nitrogen, she was an all-rounder who could fight with every element.

It had two stacked barrels and she could choose which one to fire.

By loading each barrel with different types of rounds, she could choose to fire one or the other depending on the situation. While swishing around the rope that dangled from her hips like a cat’s tail, she danced across the battlefield and used a variety of combinations to make a weapon out of all types of phenomena.

At the same time, silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki used the pitching machine made from her off-road motorcycle to launch combination cross shurikens while suppressing the recoil with her back muscles. She no longer bothered hiding the roar of the engine.

Camouflage specialist Hanasawa Bara pulled some paper from her cleavage, loaded it into the tubes in her ringlet curls, and launched a colorful powder called Dizzy Eyes to the floor to mess with Sugiyado’s depth perception. In her bleached tight skirt military uniform, Shizukuma Asagao was sending her eyes around at dizzying speeds to work out a predicted course of action for Sugiyado.

But none of it went as planned.

Because those four students were not the only ones here.

“Dammit!! Stop right there, Sugiyado-san!!”

Chain links scraped together while guided by the invisible Steel Rope.

Those four were joined by Shirazaya Guren and Suiren who wore a combination of a sleeveless white kimono top and a pleated miniskirt. Sugiyado was up against a total of 6 elites. He had already withdrawn from active duty, so this was too much for him to handle.

Or so one would have thought.

“Eh? Ah!?”

The first to bring her baggy sleeves to her mouth and speak up in confusion was the youngest girl, Asagao, who was rapidly moving her eyes around the scene. Yes, when the outsider twins appeared on the board as allies rather than enemies, it had broken down all of her predictions and calculations.

If he were fighting any one of them head on, he may not have been able to win.

Not against Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, or Shizukuma Asagao.

And not against Shirazaya Guren or Suiren.

They were truly powerful.

But what if those powerful ninjas were suddenly forced to work with someone they barely knew and they kept tripping each other up? Then their great strength would only cause greater damage to each other during any accidents.

“What!?” shouted twintailed Ouka.

Her flamethrower and the weight at the end of a kusarigama struck the exact same point on a column, but Sugiyado Souha was no longer there.

He had flipped up into the air an he landed with his back against startled Ouka’s.

“Ouka, what is your greatest weakness? I believe I taught you this lesson over and over again.”

“What!?”

He did not give her time to load another round.

Ouka’s clothing swelled out and the tail-like red rope behind her fluttered while she spun around and launched a liquid nitrogen cartridge from Midnight Tempest despite being at close enough range to catch herself in the blast. She also used her spinning motion to make a horizontal sweep of the weapon.

But he nimbly ducked blow the ultra-cold attack while the sprinkler on the ceiling activated.

He swung a Fierce Fang so its ferocity tore through the artificial rain and the moisture flash frozen by the liquid nitrogen formed a clear blade around it. The kunai now almost looked like a katana of ice.

But while slender Kuhou Ouka took a fighting stance, he suddenly made a merciless attack on Shizukuma Asagao to the side.

“You always assume you’re at the center of the action!”

“!?”

Asagao did not know how to fight directly, so she could not dodge or defend herself. Her small face was colored only by surprise. Below her tight skirt military uniform, she was protected by an ultra-thin suit with a spider silk structure and solidified by a high-polymer water-absorbing gel and electric potential elastic fibers, but her exposed face was defenseless. That was an unavoidable fact of life for a kunoichi who augmented their more traditional strength by using their beauty as a weapon. Slamming that ice sword into her temple would knock her out much like a strike from the back of the blade.

“By the way, Asagao. I believe I told you to fix your bad habit of assuming ‘that couldn’t possibly be meant for me’ during group fights.”

“Don’t you dare!!”

A complex metal roar followed as Countless Calamities changed shape from its pitching machine form. Nantou Hoozuki, who wore an open-back one-piece swimsuit and baggy pants plus belts that bound her body, had transformed it into a different gadget. It looked like a giant brutal axe with two rollers that alternately sliced through everything. She bent her back like a bow and used her full body weight to swing it down.

But it did not matter.

She had mistaken what she was up against here.

“Hoozuki.”

The weapon of steel and the weapon of ice clashed. Sugiyado’s transparent katana was shattered far too easily.

But the kunai was still a kunai.

Hoozuki had been led astray by the apparent blade there, so she failed to stop her momentum and staggered forward. With his blade back to its original length, he reversed his wrist and stabbed the Fierce Fang forward as his true attack.

But not at Hoozuki.

At the giant axe made from her off-road motorcycle. As soon as she swung Countless Calamities down too hard and it carved into the floor, sending sparks everywhere, he caught its rapidly-rotating axis on his weapon.

“The number and complexity of your gadgets is impressive, but your focus draws too far inwards while you transform it. Your focus always needs to be on the world around you.”

He used the nitrogen to open up the air-pressure kunai’s blade to destroy the motor within, sending steel pieces flying off. The blast hit her so close up that her entire body was pummeled through her bulletproof ninja outfit and her back was slammed into a thick column. He did award her some points for not screaming.

Then he threw the already-opened Fierce Fang toward the center of her chest.

A sound like a bullet hit burst from her chest and the silver ponytail girl crumpled down. No matter how much the force was negated, the impact would still reach her, and this was a deadly weapon. Without that cutting-edge ninja outfit that could block a rifle bullet, it would have broken through her sternum and pierced her heart.

That left Kuhou Ouka in the sleeveless kimono top and front and back skirt and Hanasawa Bara in the oiran-style outfit that left her shoulders bare.

No, there was also the beautiful twins Shirazaya Guren and Suiren who created a cheerleader-like silhouette using their combination of sleeveless pure white kimono tops and pleated miniskirts.

Those two may not have cared if they hit Ouka’s group too because they kept sending their kusarigama weights and stick shurikens in from the side. The weapons followed unnatural paths that included right angle turns, so simply throwing them was not enough to explain it. That should have sent them along unpredictable paths that pierced the target’s body, yet that did not happen.

“Got him!!”

Guren’s throat trembled beautifully as she raised her voice at the tactile feedback she felt from the bracelet around her wrist. With Steel Rope’s guidance, the thick chain of her kusarigama had tangled itself around the kunai in Sugiyado Souha’s right hand. That would prevent him from using it.

If it were your average weapon.

At first, she seemed to find something off about how he did not even bat an eye at her supposed accomplishment.

“!?”

A moment later, the air-pressure kunai’s blade was forced open by the nitrogen, mercilessly breaking through the thick chain from within. It was likely made of a thick chromium or tungsten alloy, but that was no match for the 15 tons of force Fierce Fang could provide. The destruction was entirely thanks to how tightly she had wrapped the chain around it.

And it did not end there.

Sugiyado grabbed the end of the broken chain and swung it toward Guren, its actual wielder.

It did not hit, of course.

Those twin sisters could use their Steel Rope that used electromagnetism to alter the paths of their ninja swords and kusarigamas in midair. A thick chain swung with only one’s physical strength would simply have control retaken.

But that did not mean there was no risk to the blonde kunoichi. She would bleed just as red if the blade she was controlling hit her. She had to focus on even the slightest fluctuation in the electromagnetic control.

And.

Simply by twirling around and leaping like some kind of dance, he continually dodged the metal weapons their Steel Rope controlled using the Lorentz force.

“What!?”

“Keep moving, Guren!!”

Shirazaya Suiren was right. Guren could not afford to come to a stop just because she could not believe her eyes. Time was still passing.

Before she could analyze anything or reach any kind of solution, an unidentified ninja moved right up to her.

“!!”

The blonde girl swung her ninja sword with all her might. The steel blade was externally controlled via the Lorentz force, so it ignored her own muscles and moved almost automatically, as if according to a computer program. The Steel Rope could have dislocated both of her shoulders if it tried and it could also bring down all the steel balls launched by a directional landmine, but Sugiyado Souha did not change tack in fighting the ninja sword it controlled. He took a dancing step and slipped right past it.

He accurately stuck the tip of his Fierce Fang into the slight gap between the sword’s blade and its guard.

Then he opened it.

The brutal force of the nitrogen tore the ninja sword apart from within.

“Tch!?”

Thanks to the Steel Rope’s Lorentz force, the remnants of the broken sword remained floating in midair, but that did not change that the weapon had been destroyed while it was being swung down in a supposedly surefire strike. In a way, that was more difficult than simply taking her life and it was pure humiliation for the one on the receiving end.

“Damn you. Doing that in a serious battle is as infantilizing as patting me on the head!”

At this point, the kunoichi with a red hair extension noticed something was wrong. This was too much for an ordinary person to accomplish. Predicting the path of her and Suiren’s blades was impressive enough, but why was his kunai not captured by the Lorentz force? The lines of guiding magnetism and electromagnetism filled the space in a complex marble pattern and it would take knowing that like the back of your hand to pull off what he did.

But that was as far as her thoughts got.

The bottom of a Fierce Fang, where the instant nitrogen foam cartridge was inserted, struck her on the back of the head. The blow to her central nerves led to a pause. The light in her eyes faded in less than a second.

Her throat trembled irregularly and the air burst from her lungs.

Aim for a weak point and you could knock someone out even in a bulletproof spider silk ninja outfit. Even if you were a washed-up ninja whose back felt odd at 5kg and exploded with pain at 10kg.

“…”

He approached Shirazaya Suiren in the same way.

Those twins were meant to work as a pair, so they were far too fragile with one of the wings broken.

“Sorry.”

“Gh!?”

After a dull sound of impact, Suiren doubled over.

But she managed to stay on her feet for a moment.

“The bolts…in your spine? Yes, that explains it. You could feel the tug on the metal in your body, so you could read the electromagnetism.”

But only for a moment.

After another dull sound of impact, she dropped down.

With a new Fierce Fang in both hands, he faced his final foes.

This time, it really was only twintails Kuhou Ouka with her undeveloped figure and red ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara with her sexy figure.

But taking out the twins had removed the interference.

With a solid thunk, Ouka returned her bent gun to normal.

Their group of four was not complete, but Ouka and Bara were excellent partners who could draw out each other’s power more than if they fought alone. And the purity of their combat had returned. Sugiyado Souha would be chewed up and spat out if he challenged them head on.

Yes.

If he did that.

“Ha…ha ha.”

Someone could be heard kicking off the column directly above.

(There he is.)

Sugiyado smiled in his heart, but the poor puppet had no way of noticing that.

It was the faceless ninja who had worn a gasmask before.

It was the assassin who had supposedly been stuffed in a large coin locker.

“You dumbass!! Never take your eyes off a pro ninja until you’ve delivered the killing blow!!”

“Welcome, fool. You’re right on time.”

If he had not wanted this, he would have killed the boy or knocked him unconscious. Why did the boy not realize that? Apparently even pros had a hard time breaking the bad habit of wanting to believe the convenient lies.

Just like Sugiyado Souha had when he had not noticed that his own students were rebelling.

The beautiful boy in a leather bodysuit truly caught Ouka and Bara off guard when he jumped in from above. After all, they had never even noticed that they and the Shogunate spy twins had nearly been slaughtered by PCB9.

And you could not plan around something you had never imagined.

After finally getting back on their feet, slender Ouka and curvy Bara were tripped up once more.

They were thrown into a three-way brawl without any time to prepare.

A storm of steel raged.

First, the beautiful boy wanted to have the upper hand over Sugiyado, so he tried to take the students hostage. However, that only led to the instructor’s air-pressure kunai roaring out and knocking the boy away. Redheaded ringlet curls Hanasawa Bara was caught in the blast, knocked onto her stomach, and squashed beneath the boy’s weight. Her large breasts squished softly between her body and the floor. The 18 coilgun launch tubes in her hair could not aim while similarly squished by her body.

“Sen-”

“Go to sleep, Bara.”

When he used a blow from the bottom of a kunai to send a nonlethal impact to the back of her neck, she went limp.

That left just one – Kuhou Ouka.

“!?”

“!”

The air was sliced through.

She raised Midnight Tempest and he raised a Fierce Fang, but they were too close together. He was already close enough to hug her. When it was time to use the bayonet, Midnight Tempest functioned more like a spear, so this range was better suited for the kunai.

He jammed the tip of the blade into the gap between the vertically-stacked barrels and used the nitrogen to pry them apart until they dully snapped.

When speed mattered more than weight, he could make good use of his body with three bolts in the spine and springs in the knees.

“We…”

The pieces of the hunting gun fell to the floor.

It had truly been one-on-one in the end there, but Sugiyado had still pushed through. Something escaped Ouka’s trembling lips while she showed off her growing figure with that white sleeveless kimono top and front and back skirt.

She sounded like she was enraged with the absurd violence, but also like she had seen the thing she had so longed to see.

“We only wanted to help you…even a little bit.”

“Thank you.”

In this Sugiyado Souha was entirely honest.

But then he reversed the hand holding the opened Fierce Fang and said more.

“But you still have much to learn.”

The bottom of the kunai roared over like a hammer.

With a dull thud, it knocked the girl unconscious.

### 008. Chapter 6

### 1: Unforeseen Yet Inevitable

The battle was over.

Sugiyado Souha sighed while viewing the girls lying unconscious within the B3 plaza. He had been protecting them. This had been the only available method. He had achieved everything he set out to achieve. And yet it took all his might to avoid punching himself in the face.

He made a conscious effort to shift his focus.

He picked up his scattered Fierce Fang air-pressure kunais, swapped out the instant nitrogen foam cartridges, and stored them within the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. He would have to locate all the blood, sweat, hairs, and signs of destruction as well. He could not call himself a ninja if he did not at least eliminate any evidence that could be used to identify him.

(They were taught by me, so I should be able to borrow their tools.)

He scratched the scar on his nose, reached into collapsed Ouka’s pocket, and used the special sprayer he found there to clean up while focusing on his earphone.

“John, I’m done here. As promised, I will hand over the empty poison gas canister and the criminal. Tell me where to meet you.”

“Geez, you actually took them all out with your handicap? Now I feel dumb worrying about you, teach. I just sent some Tuxedos your way. You can’t carry someone thanks to your spine, right? Let my men take care of the girls.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it! The Kingdom’s gentlemen love this sort of job most of all. Anyway, we went ahead and threatened our Shogunate contact, but things aren’t looking good. You should probably be on your guard.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“We’re still negotiating with the isolationist government’s contact, but we can’t get anything solid out of them. I thought they were just panicking at first, but it doesn’t seem that way anymore. It’s like they can’t seem to contact their higher ups.”

“You mean those higher ups made a run for it while we still hold their Achilles’ heel? Not a chance.”

“Yeah. It’s possible they’re taking us for a ride here.”

“…”

Someone was taking advantage of this chaos.

They had predicted that things would be shaken up to an abnormal degree and they had used the confusion to accomplish something.

Sugiyado Souha himself had thought pressure from the Kingdom would make it too difficult for the Shogunate to continue covering for the bureaucratic advisor behind all this, so the villain would be cast out of the system and brought to a position where an individual could reach them.

But had someone else set things up so they could cause even greater damage?

“I should probably ask Ouka’s group why they decided to look into my past in the first place.”

“Yeah. Same with those Shogunate spy twins. I would recommend looking into what information they received that led them to ask you for help. The same person may have been behind both decisions.”

“You mean it was all to pit Ouka’s group and the twins against each other as two of the Shogunate’s most powerful ninja groups?”

“No.”

For the first time, their opinions diverged.

John had something else to say.

“They wanted to pit the old against the new – a Hidden One against Elite Ninjas. I don’t know who it was, but I bet you fighting your students was a part of their plan. The twins were only the detonator.”

“…”

“Since they tried to make it an even fight instead of a one-sided slaughter, they must have wanted to prolong the chaos as much as possible. But what did they hope to accomplish using that cover?”

And who was this person?

Not only had they planned something so ambitious, but they must have known about Sugiyado Souha’s final mission that the Shogunate had kept hidden. They also must have had no qualms about putting 200,000 innocent people in harm’s way to cover it all up. Even though they should have been assured a comfortable life by secretly threatening the Shogunate officials, so that ambition plan should have been unnecessary.

They had rejected that idea.

Even though they could have been given a secret position of absolute privilege where the government protected them so much they could kill someone in broad daylight and see no repercussions. So why? The Shogunate officials were nigh untouchable, but why discard that easy route in order to “eliminate” them?

While thinking through this issue, something crawled up in the back of Sugiyado Souha’s mind.

“It can’t be.”

“What?”

“No, it can’t be. It just can’t. She can’t possibly make an appearance now.”

He sounded like he was trapped in a nightmare.

But the questions from John had stopped. Ironically, it was the knight waiting up in the night sky who encountered the truth first.

Yes.

Physically encountered it.

“What the hell is that? …Wait. This atmosphere, this scent.”

“John?”

“Dammit. I get it now. Unless my sensors are broken, it’s that ghost!! This is indeed beyond your abilities. Engage!! I’ll start a defensive battle here and call in support from the aerial aircraft carrier even though this is nowhere near my jurisdiction! This warrants it!!”

“No, John!! If this is what I think it is, then not even a Kingdom armored knight can handle it!!”

The conversation ended there because the connection was severed.

(Dammit!!)

He could not control his heartrate. The bad feeling inside him only continued to grow. Waking up the others and taking them with him would only put them in more danger. He decided to do this alone. He hurried up the stairs to reach the closest exit from the underground mall. On the way, he passed by several people in the supposedly deserted place. Unlike him or Ouka, they were nondescript and inhumanly cold, so they had to be the Kingdom’s Tuxedos. They would look after Ouka and the others even though that would put them at greater risk. He gave them a bow out of obligation and not just appreciation.

He caught glimpses that something was amiss even before leaving the underground mall.

It was hot, but not due to the weather. It was like being thrown inside a stone oven. If the heat was this scorching from a distance, just how abnormal a situation would he find outside?

(Yes, it’s the same.)

As he ran, he was reminded of his past. He remembered when death had been a constant companion, when he had failed to predict anything at all, and when he had needed to constantly adlib ways to slip from the grim reaper’s grasp to survive. He had felt like he was crawling through an ocean of blood and mud. This had the same scent and atmosphere, but now was not the time to rejoice at the reunion.

(Come to think of it, I caught glimpses of this the entire time I pursued Ouka’s group with Guren and Suiren. This scent was in my nose the entire time. Yes, none of it ever actually ended. This is all a continuation of that final mission!!)

He finally reached the exit to the surface.

A scorching wind hit him like a solid wall as he set foot in the city night.

Everything was colored by a golden-burning hell.

The usual neon signs and car headlights were nowhere to be seen. Not even the ordinary darkness of the night was allowed to exist.

Molten rock covered everything.

A boiling sea of magma bubbled up like the fountain of youth, gas erupted out, and all forms of life were robbed of a livable environment.

There was no sign of John Kniferidge in his silver Claiomh Solais knight armor. However, some arms and legs from the unmanned musketeers who served the knights could be seen floating here and there in the bubbling lava.

He had almost certainly been shot down and the pilot’s survival was unknown.

It took dozens of this country’s armored samurai to just barely be powerful enough to defeat one of those armored knights, and victory was even more difficult when that knight was accompanied by a full unit of unmanned musketeers.

Yet one of those knights had been so easily defeated here.

That nightmare was back.

According to John, Kingdom agents who had infiltrated this country had come up with an excuse to evacuate the civilians from this area to protect them from the possible poison gas leak. Ouka’s group and the blonde twins would have been collected by the Tuxedos. But those were the only two pieces of good news.

Sugiyado looked up toward the moon as if mimicking his past actions.

Yes.

Sugiyado Souha had been badly injured during his final mission.

But who exactly had done it?

There was nothing to stand on for kilometers around. With a bit of bad luck, the tall reinforced concrete buildings might even tilt and sink into the lava.

Nevertheless, a beautiful girl in a ninja outfit was illuminated by both the lava erupting from the depths of the earth and the cold moonlight pouring down from the heavens. Her clothing was similar to Kuhou Ouka’s, but also different. It was still a bodysuit combined with a white sleeveless kimono top and a front and back skirt, but the sides of the top were left wide open and the back fell below her hips like a coat, making it look like a cross between an ancient queen’s dress and a surgical gown.

It would not have been originally designed to create such obvious sex appeal. It would have been designed to best draw out the special trait of a young girl – that is, a protective desire and a cute impression that would cause any attacking hands to hesitate. A split second could be the difference between life and death in the ninja world, so being adorable could be a deadly weapon there.

But the impression changed entirely when the person within it had changed.

You could say she had matured and then some as a girl, and you could even say she had begun to rot. That monster’s demeanor – no, her seduction – was reminiscent of a fruit with an intensely sweet smell. The fact that she was originally the cute type made this change seem all the more alluring, sweet, and (most of all) immoral.

Her madness drew people in to a gruesome extent.

She was like a Venus flytrap.

You could even say she embodied the seduction of death. The grim reaper’s scythe that gave people everlasting peace may have been coated with a poison this sweet. He knew the truth here, but if he did not focus his mind, his thoughts would have been stirred up from outside and his concentration would have been forcibly disturbed. Even though she was not trying to do anything of the sort.

“…”

To reiterate, there was nothing to stand on and she was not standing on the ground, yet there she was.

She was floating.

She hovered about 5m above the sea of lava.

What were ninja techniques?

The ones used in the current age were best described as an adaptation of stage magic. Special tools were set up in advance, wires were laid out in secret, and then you waited for your opponent to be fooled. Realists who claimed they only believed what their own eyes showed them would fall for the illusion and be left in the depths of confusion. It could all be explained using tricks, so it all came down to one’s breadth of knowledge. That was how it was supposed to work.

But this girl was the one exception.

This was something entirely different from the ninja techniques that used an extension of existing techniques to create new, modern equipment. This took things so far that even a front-line Hidden One found it grotesque.

This absolute absurdity was even more bizarre than the ninjas seen in old stories.

She had taken ninja techniques to a truly occult place.

She used the term “psychic” to realize the illusions behind ninja techniques. The inside of her skull was covered in a material that absorbed electromagnetic waves to remove all external EM interference and a pacemaker had been implanted in her healthy heart to let her consciously alter her heart rate like changing gears. Thanks to those changes, she could guide herself into an extreme trance whenever she liked.

The bolts in Sugiyado’s back ached ominously.

No, the ache came from the wound a certain girl had given him.

That sword strike had not just physically wounded him; it had left its scars on his psyche as well.

He knew her name.

The figure showing through her spider silk ninja outfit was awfully sensual. Long hair flowed down her back and two shorter bundles of hair fell to either side of her head. That glossy black hair contained a bewitching sheen. But he could never forget. He still vividly remembered the name of the one who had slashed his back.

They belonged to the same rank, the same system, and the same world.

She existed beyond even the Elite Ninjas who stood at the top of the existing High, Middle, and Low hierarchy. She was one of the Hidden Ones, whose total numbers not even he knew.

So he shouted her name, as if facing his past.

“Oniyuri!!”

He heard a quiet voice.

It was a laugh.

Her head tilted at an angle, a stray strand of hair had found its way between her lips, and a sticky clear liquid dripped from the corner of her lips. The red of her cheeks had to be more than just reflected lava light. One look at her excessively damp eyes was enough to tell she was using Divine Decree. She had consciously turned an invisible dial to send herself on a “trip”.

With her melted gaze on him, that disaster in human form continued laughing.

She was undoubtedly one of the Hidden Ones.

She was one of the elites of the elite who had been there with Sugiyado Souha in an older era.

“So we meet again, instructor.”

“…”

“I can call you that now, can’t I? I have been dreaming of you this whole time. It is too late to try to save someone only after arriving on the battlefield, so you wanted to teach people everything they needed to survive before the fighting began. Wasn’t that your dream?”

This was an inner motivation that not even Ouka’s group or the twins knew about.

Oniyuri’s knowledge of that fact hinted that she had not simply been an enemy originally.

She had not been an ally by any means, but he had not wanted to call her an enemy.

Like a marriage scammer, she had a way of remaining in your heart even after you were deceived. Not even someone on Sugiyado Souha’s level could find quite the right word to describe her.

She truly embodied the feminine side of being a ninja.

She was the perfect kunoichi.

“What have you been doing all this time?”

“Nothing really. I lived through that past, I’m facing this present, and I need to decide what future to seek out. Although if I hadn’t done anything, I doubt anything would have changed.”

What did it feel like to mechanically alter your brain using an external device?

Whatever the case, Oniyuri could not stop smiling while drawing out psychic powers from her brain’s trance state.

She stuck out her unexpectedly long tongue and wet her lips.

“But that would have been boring, so I decided to break free of the Shogunate’s chains. The Tenshukaku at the top is protected by this country’s most powerful system, but that security will temporarily freeze during an incident so earthshattering that the entire Shogunate hierarchy is shaken. So I just had to make my move in that moment.”

“…”

“So don’t worry, instructor. All the sketchy people keeping watchful eyes on you have been returned to the earth. Oh, but I do apologize if you wanted to kill them yourself. I didn’t even leave any ashes behind.”

It finally started to sink in what Sugiyado had been a part of here.

It had all been so she could leave.

The series of shocking events beginning with the modular nuclear reactor had been too much for the top of the Shogunate to bear. They had wanted something to rely on to escape that pressure, so they had opened this Elite One’s cell so she could eliminate those four Elite Ninjas. They had chosen to release this calamitous beast if it would bring about a swift end to their problems.

Had they felt there was no point in holding back?

But surely they should have known who their assassin would devour first once that cell door had opened.

“How far did you take it?”

“Hee hee. You really have changed, instructor. You have found a path of comfortable change taking you in the direction you desired. I, on the other hand, have been stuck in a standstill this entire time.”

“How much damage did you do to the Tenshukaku and how many samurai heads did you take, Oniyuri!?”

He just about overlooked it, but it hit him a moment later.

Stuck in a standstill?

She had not changed – could not change.

“Wait, no, it can’t be.”

“Are we done talking now? Hee hee. My blood hasn’t been pumping like this in a long time. Yes, I thought I might not know what to do with myself after finding freedom for the first time in forever, but I didn’t. Yes, this is what I really wanted to do.”

The floating girl glowed bewitchingly in the lava light within her ninja outfit that resembled an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown, and she pointed her skinny index finger toward the heavens.

Immediately, the world converged.

All the scorching lava covering kilometers of the ground began to move like a living creature as she controlled it with her psychic Divine Decree power. The hellish deluge that had swallowed up everything here began to swirl, break free of the planet’s gravity, and gather on a single point. Yes, directly above Oniyuri’s raised finger.

In the end, the blazing hot mass was smaller than a basketball.

That flood of lava could have swallowed up an entire small village, so this extreme pressure caused it to glow all the more sinisterly. Sugiyado Souha gulped as he looked up at it.

His hand trembled while holding a Fierce Fang.

It’s all happening again, he thought.

He had once fought behind the scenes to save a foreign queen caught between the Kingdom and the Shogunate. It had ended in a draw and his body had been left scarred. This was the secret technique he had seen back then.

With her tongue hanging limply from her lips with a thin strand of saliva dripping from it, the horrifyingly beautiful girl spoke with a crazed smile on her lips.

“Hee hee. How about this as an opening move? I am a bit tired right now, so we can finish this later, okay?”

This was not the Strategic Martial Arts approved by this country and its Shogunate. Modern ninja techniques took the arresting techniques and military martial arts based on old-fashioned karate, judo, and kendo and updated them in order to save as many people as possible during times of turmoil. They were powerful techniques, but that was all they were. So this was different. What could you hope to protect using a power as sinister as this?

This was an uncontrollable power that would simply destroy everything in its path.

“An annihilating sun,” muttered Sugiyado Souha in a daze.

A moment later, the girl snapped her fingers with a meaningful smile and the raised sphere burst. A scorching hell erupted in all directions with more than twice the intensity with which it had been gathered.

A paper tiger like his air-pressure kunai was entirely useless in the face of the truly supernatural.

### 2: The Final Heroine

There once was an unfortunate girl.

That was the only way to describe that small girl who crawled through a living hell thoroughly calculated out and managed by the state.

But the one thing she hated more than anything was for people to feel sorry for her.

Anyone could tell she carried a misguided sort of pride.

The purpose she saw in her life had likely been implanted within her by someone else. People could survive in the worst of conditions if they had a goal to work toward. They could bear with it if they had hope. If they thought of themselves as a special chosen one who could do what no else could, then they would not question the special role given to them and they would in fact find pride in it. All because the adults around her – the Shogunate officials who were supposed to be the guardians of law and order – had taught her to believe those things.

There had never been any need for her to go along with it.

She had Divine Decree. Her skull had been sliced up like tofu, a material to absorb electromagnetic waves had been pasted to the inside, and a pacemaker had been implanted in her healthy heart to externally control her heartrate. Perhaps it was true that she had been chosen. But was that really an honor? Hadn’t they only been looking for a convenient person who would not complain as they did all of that to her?

The ugly duckling was really a swan.

But was it really all that great to find out you were a swan who no one wanted to be around?

Long ago, Sugiyado Souha had met her.

The Shogunate and the Kingdom had been fighting over the young queen in an extreme game of beach flags where they wanted to be the first to the queen for their own selfish purposes, even if they crushed her in their grasp or only managed to take a piece of her corpse.

That had been his final mission.

She had been one of the pursuers and he was assisting the pursued queen, so they had been enemies. But after attempting to understand her thoughts so he could predict her actions, he may have developed a deeper connection to her than anyone else.

He had learned about her and she had come to understand him.

Which was why he had failed.

He could have stopped. He would have been perfectly justified in focusing on the Kingdom’s small queen and cutting down that formidable foe.

But it was one more person.

Just one more.

That was how he had seen it.

And then he could not escape another thought: I want to save this girl.

Even if no one else wanted it, he had wanted to bring Sagami Oniyuri out into the light.

That was all he had wanted.

### 3: Rebooting in the Apartment

“Sensei!!”

Even the stirring of his body felt weird. Sugiyado Souha gave a scratchy groan that did not sound like his own voice and opened his eyes to find himself lying down somewhere. He also saw four girls looking down at him.

They were Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

“Are you okay? Honestly though, what even happened!?”

Twintail Ouka was wearing a knit sweater and a miniskirt as she moved her face in close as if leaning over him, but he did not respond as he slowly sat up. He wanted to know the current situation. What had happened since Sagami Oniyuri’s Divine Decree had covered a quarter of New Yokohama with lava?

“The ordinary people are safe,” said slender Ouka. “The entire city was on edge after the central heating explosion in the underground mall, so they had mostly evacuated indoors. They fled to the upper floors once the lava showed up, so apparently no one was caught in it. I’ve heard everyone is terrified because they think those were linked terrorist attacks.”

“We can only be grateful that social media can get word around quickly and that this country is so good at disaster relief despite being horribly unprepared for war,” said Bara who was wearing a cardigan over an otherwise light outfit.

“I see,” sighed Sugiyado.

He knew he was being naïve, but he could not deny how relieved he was to learn so little damage had been done. Even though Oniyuri must have already left the Tenshukaku soaked with blood.

This had revealed the handiwork of a ninja to the public on an unprecedented scale, but that very scale left the ordinary people unsure what had happened. Social media could not track down the truth on this one. No one thought a single individual could have caused that.

“Then where are we?”

His torn and bloody clothes had been replaced with new ones. A new short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, to be exact. So who exactly had known his taste in clothing and actually changed the clothes for him? When he looked at the girls, they all avoided looking him in the eye for some reason. Why were all their faces red? Especially Ouka. The way she held a hand over her nose made it look like she had a nosebleed or something.

Also, he had not been taken to a hospital room. This was a small rundown room with a tatami mat floor. It was a super-cheap apartment. The lack of light coming through the window and the clock on the wall told him it was night had already fallen. He looked around and finally remembered where this was.

“Hello, honored guest. Neither of us fared well out there, did we? But it was a slap from a beauty, so I’m willing to forgive her.”

John Kniferidge was wrapped in bandages, had one arm in a cast, and wore a leather jacket over a flight suit.

“From the look of you, I take it your knight armor is in the lava.”

“I’m actually glad it was melted so nicely. I don’t want the Shogunate retrieving some half-destroyed scraps.” John sighed. “I’m also glad there was a room we could use. I’m not a spy or a Tuxedo, so I’d be in trouble if I tried to wander around in enemy territory like this.”

They were interrupted by an exaggerated sigh.

It came from someone with a white dress and beautiful blonde hair shining in the room’s light, but who was on the opposite side of the conflict from John. It was one of the Shogunate spy twins.

Shirazaya Guren’s slender throat trembled as she spoke up.

“I never imagined we would be using a Kingdom spy hideout.”

“If it is true this man has been assisting you, then this is a very alarming development, Sugiyado-san.”

Both twins were icily glaring at him.

Yet they were somehow hesitant to say too much, so they may have had a hunch that it was the Kingdom’s Tuxedos who rescued them from that lava hell while they were unconscious.

Before he could say anything in his defense, Hanasawa Bara crossed her arms in her cardigan and tight skirt, lifting up her large breasts, and opened her mouth.

“That is not true. In fact, it is quite the opposite. This is a room Sensei prepared for himself and they copied his key and started using it without his permission. The room belongs to Sensei.”

“That doesn’t really matter.” The young bob cut girl in a knit dress passed him a cup of water with the hands sticking out of her baggy sleeves, so he rubbed Shizukuma Asagao’s small head while finally opening his mouth. “Guren and Suiren? Ninjas like us are not an official army like the samurai or knights. We are nameless spies gathered to achieve the results that are needed but cannot be written in any official paperwork. So don’t get caught up in the official lines between enemy and ally. The world is overrun with problems that can’t be solved from just one direction.”

One blonde kunoichi held out her arm to show him the tracking bracelet she wore.

“The Shogunate will not defend you in this.”

“Of course they won’t. The day they start officially defending stuff like this is the day they’re finally overthrown. Although I’ll be curious to see how they plan to get back on their feet now that the Tenshukaku at the top have been slain.”

He said it so matter-of-factly, so the twins had to sigh again. Were they impressed by how he lived his life, or had they decided nothing could ever fix his stupidity?

The girls gathered around the uncomfortable bedding began speaking once more.

First up was silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki who stretched her back inside a loose sweat hoodie.

“Sensei, it’s about time you told us just what we were made a part of.”

“I suppose so,” said Sugiyado.

He chose to speak it all aloud here to help him organize his own confused thoughts.

“There was a kunoichi named Sagami Oniyuri.”

John stiffened at that name since he had been directly involved in the final mission.

The girls had arrived later than that, so it did not mean much of anything to them.

“The general public thinks of ninjas as people who can clasp their hands together and hold a scroll in their mouth to create an explosion of smoke and solve everything, but that kind of ninja does not really exist. Oniyuri, however, is an exception. Her body has been modified in 88 places – primarily in the brain and heart – to give her the psychic powers needed to take a step into the mystical realm with her ninja techniques.”

That was what had created that lava sea.

Sugiyado held his head in a hand.

“Oniyuri has made those psychic powers her own and I doubt anyone but her knows what exactly Divine Decree is. I have tried to explain it rationally, like that she uses telekinesis to float and that she rapidly vibrates molecules to create heat, but all I have is speculation.”

“But why do this now, Sensei?”

Black bob cut Shizukuma Asagao tilted her extremely small head.

“You’re looking at this wrong.” The boy’s answer was obvious. “Oniyuri has been crawling through that same hell ever since what happened back then. Because I failed to grab her hand, she has continued to sink into the darkest parts of the Shogunate.”

“Sensei…”

“So she plotted a way to escape on her own. I can’t even imagine how many layers of security are generally applied to a kunoichi who can use that psychic Divine Decree as a weapon, but she was waiting all this time for that perfect hierarchy to be shaken. All while she occasionally leaked some information to you four or to Guren and Suiren as they pursued you.”

It was now the white dress twins’ turn to bring a hand to their foreheads where they stood over by the wall.

“You mean we were being manipulated too?”

“We are Shogunate spies, but we have never even heard the name Oniyuri.”

Sugiyado shook his head.

“In a way, she is a more perfect ninja than I am. If me having connections to both the Shogunate and the Kingdom was enough to surprise you, then you can’t even imagine how deep the rabbit hole goes with Oniyuri.”

Besides.

“Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, Asagao. I know you were angry that I was being treated unfairly, but where did those feelings begin?”

“What? But…but we don’t need a reason to want-!”

“The Shogunate is thoroughly covering up everything about what happened to me back then, so you would never start to question my past for no reason. That alone is proof that their media manipulation defenses were falling apart.”

“…”

“Someone must have been giving you glimpses of that information out in the open and in secret. For example, hearing ‘multiple sources’ insulting me behind my back but where you could hear them. But those people who thought themselves so knowledgeable while they whispered questionable secrets to each other were only being manipulated by a game of telephone that began with Oniyuri back in her cell. They played right into her hand without noticing any of it. Then you picked up on that and began developing exactly the emotions she was hoping for.”

That technique was more like the Machiavellianism of a harem than a ninja technique, but that too was part of a kunoichi’s repertoire. This was not a sport with separate weight classes where arm strength and lung capacity did all the talking. For better or for worse, they brought those “feminine” aspects to the battlefield.

She had slipped malicious information to the people who visited her cell and used their mouths to spread rumors like a game of telephone to ultimately have Ouka’s group cause trouble. She had never expected Guren and Suiren to be able to stop them. In fact, the trick had been to delay the conclusion until the Shogunate leaders panicked and decided to release her from her cell to resolve it as soon as possible. And once she was out, she immediately bit the hand that fed her and assaulted the Tenshukaku. Everything that had happened was connected.

She had soaked the Tenshukaku in blood.

That was simple enough to say, but Sugiyado guessed that she had made it look like an indiscriminate slaughter when she actually intentionally left a certain number of survivors behind. But not out of the goodness of her heart. Then the Council of Elders would see it as a chance to take power for themselves or to assist the Shogunate’s recovery as a favor they could cash in on later. The many conflicting plots that would spring up would end up binding them. The fact that news of the attack on the Tenshukaku was still being thoroughly suppressed made it clear that something was up.

Ninjas did more than make use of preexisting cracks. At Oniyuri’s level, they could smash a solid monolith to pieces.

“And with Guren and Suiren, it was a little too convenient that they managed to reach me so soon after Ouka’s group got into trouble. While they’re irreplaceable students for me, they were already Elite Ninjas working for the center of the state, so they must have connections to tens of thousands of people, including the invisible ones of profit even they aren’t aware of. I doubt you could have pinpointed me as a relevant party so quickly without assistance. I imagine someone casually dropped you a hint or went around eliminating all your other theories. All while they had no idea they were relaying a message for Oniyuri. There would have been no material evidence there. John or Violia could probably have smelled it, but that only works for someone who was in a direct confrontation with her.”

“Understood. We can reach a conclusion about that later, so let’s learn about our enemy now.”

“I find this hard to believe, but those doubts will only delay us right now. Please go ahead.”

“Sure.” Sugiyado Souha nodded. “You really could call it a grand plan. I can’t even imagine how many people now lie dead in the bloody Tenshukaku. But her actual objective must be incredibly simple.”

“?”

Kuhou Ouka tilted her head with her growing figure contained in a knit sweater and miniskirt.

“She wants freedom. She wants to travel the world as she likes without anyone restricting her. That is all she wants. It is all she has ever wanted since I first met her.”

In other words, in the years since he had let go of that freedom-seeking girl’s hand, she had been meaninglessly imprisoned, subjected to insane human experiments at the hands of the Shogunate which claimed to advocate justice, and only been allowed outside when it was time to defeat and kill someone. That feeling of being trapped and hopeless was something that Sugiyado could never even imagine after living his life as an instructor and supported by so many people.

“Who’s supporting her?” John sounded exasperated with his arm in a sling. “Biting the hand that feeds you and devouring the rest of them to escape your cage will only get you so far. I doubt any individual who attacks an entire nation will last long. We won’t touch this one, but what about Asia or the New World? Does she have some hidden thread connecting back to a force powerful enough to rival the Shogunate?”

“No, I doubt she has something like that. She simply wants to rejoice in her freedom. It might only last a minute or a second, but she loves true freedom. The protection of some other organization would only sully it. Those bonds would only get in her way.” Sugiyado slowly exhaled. “Why did she use her psychic Divine Decree to fly to New Yokohama Domain immediately after slaughtering the Tenshukaku in Tokyo? Why did she burn down a quarter of the city upon seeing me? Why was she waiting there to speak with me? The answer is obvious: she’s going down the list of things she wanted to do once she was free. This isn’t about some larger group and its interests. This is all there is to her.”

Someone audibly gulped.

This insanity was enough to fill the room with silence.

“B-but doing that is suicide.”

“John. She has not changed at all since we last saw her.”

John initially frowned, unsure what the boy meant, so Sugiyado broke it down for the man and restated it.

“I’m saying she still has those body modification implants in 88 parts of her body. The simple act of walking creates enough force to lift up her internal organs. Plus, she has her psychic flight. It might look like she does not feel any weight, but when she ends the flight and lands, the burden is even greater than what we feel. Yet she is still the same as she was on the inside. Do you get what that means?”

“That would make a complete mess of her insides!”

“It’s honestly a miracle she’s lived this long. She has nearly 90 implants in her body and just one of them catching on a blood vessel or organ can kill her.”

“But…but why, Sensei?”

Kuhou Ouka looked pale and Sugiyado shook his head.

“I’ve never heard of Divine Decree ninjas being mass produced. That means they never could make another one of her, so I imagine the Shoguante wasn’t willing to let go of such a valuable specimen. I mean, no one can explain how she works, so swapping out any of the parts could ruin the perfect balance and make her lose the psychic powers.”

The Shogunate had intended to force her to live that life for years or even decades until they finally cracked it. They knew deep down that analyzing it was not possible, but the prospect was too attractive to let her go.

That was why Sagami Oniyuri had quickly given up on obeying the Shogunate.

She would not last long either way. The Shogunate had no intention of swapping out her parts and she could not acquire the parts or update them on her own. And of course, simply pulling the implants out of her body would not save her either. She was blocked at every turn. So even if it was only for a moment, she wanted to experience true freedom. That may have been how she broke.

“So is that psychic stuff the secret of your final mission that the Shogunate was so desperate to hide? Not that it matters now that Oniyuri defeated the villains in the Tenshukaku.”

Twintail Ouka pouted her lips a little bit in her miniskirt and sweater. That girl with an undeveloped figure must have wanted to bring the villains to court to recover Sugiyado Souha’s honor, no matter what the secret turned out to be.

“Most likely. But come to think of it,” said Sugiyado. “Yes, I think Oniyuri’s presence may have settled all of that.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

John looked puzzled and Sugiyado shrugged.

“Back then, I wasn’t aware that her psychic powers had been created under the name of Divine Decree. John, you didn’t either, did you? That means she wasn’t being used in actual combat yet back then. They were only sending her in for a trial run to gather test data.”

“You mean they sent such an unstable form of firepower to that battle over our queen? To be clear, our Kingdom saw that entire event as one step away from doomsday.”

“I imagine the Shogunate had not planned for what happened there either. In their original scenario, they only wanted to test her against you knights who were fighting for the honor of rescuing that little thing – or as they saw it, using that as an excuse to test our strength and steal our tech. She was unstable and difficult to control at the time, but her initial objective was to pursue you and that led to attacking the queen. The chain of command meant to bind her then must have collapsed.”

“Yeah, if it got out they chose another country’s head of state to test their new experimental weapon on, it could only lead to all-out war. We would have to respond to such arrogant provocation.”

“Although I bet the Shogunate officials were more aghast than anyone since they had only wanted experimental data on the psychic powers. They completely lost control. Oniyuri was wandering around without anyone capable of accurately aiming her, so she could have killed your queen at any time. If that huge a mistake ever got out, they were done for. It didn’t matter what they had intended to do. Sending in such a risky weapon at all would be enough for a major international incident. And explaining themselves would have required revealing their top secret Divine Decree research. They would have to tell everyone about the tech they thought they had entirely to themselves, so they were all forced to pretend they knew nothing at all about what was happening.”

“Um.” Twintail Kuhou Ouka raised her hand. “But, Sensei, wasn’t staying quiet the more dangerous option?”

“Which is why the interest was piling up all the while. Right up until Oniyuri used the recent chaos to take off the officials’ heads.”

They finally had a picture of the entire incident, but it was too late. Everything had changed from the moment Sagami Oniyuri appeared out in the open.

The red hair extension girl, Shirazaya Guren, spoke while crossing her arms by the wall.

“Do you have any idea what she will do next?”

“She must have a long list of things she wants to do. But while she wants to enjoy her freedom to its fullest, she doesn’t have much time. She won’t be able to create any new friends or lovers, so she should try to use her old acquaintances to act out her desires.”

“Hold on…are you saying what I think you’re saying!?”

“Me, John, and the queen. We are the only ones who reached an understanding with her during that final mission. We’re the only ones she has to rely on. There are billions of people out there and she can manipulate them with her Machiavellian trickery, but we are the only ones she has established a real connection with.”

Also, given what she had been through, it was unclear if she had ever learned how to hold ordinary relationships or how to judge her distance with someone.

They had come to understand each other during their pursuit and fierce fighting. They had needed to understand each other to threaten them, persuade them, fight them, escape them, outdo them, and kill them. And beyond Oniyuri’s calculated Machiavellianism, if she had only ever learned one way to search out what someone thought, she might very well throw a flood of lava at someone like anyone else would ring their neighbor’s doorbell.

In a way, Sugiyado and John had been the ones to teach her to do that.

By engaging in such an extreme form of communication with her in the past.

“So if we use you as bait, we can draw out Oniyuri?”

“I couldn’t tell you which one of us she’ll go after first, though. John, you fought her when you lost your armor, right? How did she react?”

“She entirely ignored me. She didn’t seem happy to see me and she didn’t seem to see me as a threat either. She held out a hand without even looking in my direction and then…crash. Maybe she’s only interested in fellow ninjas.”

“If so, the little queen won’t work either. So she’s only interested in me, huh?”

Everyone’s eyes focused on Sugiyado sitting on the futon.

A stiff smile appeared on Kuhou Ouka’s face.

“Y-you’re kidding, right? You barely survived what happened earlier! You can’t do that!! A-and based on what I’ve heard, um!!”

“You can say it. I couldn’t beat her. And that’s why I lost my wings.”

Even in his prime, his entire body had been destroyed in multiple ways and he had just barely survived it. Now a 5kg weight made his back feel funny and a 10kg one caused it to explode with pain. If he tried that again with that extreme handicap, the odds of survival would be even lower. Victory was entirely out of the question.

However…

“I have to stop Oniyuri. You see what her psychic powers can do, right? This is too much for even the Shogunate to cover up.”

“Kh.”

A sea of lava had covered everything.

She had done enough damage to wipe a small village or town from the map. But instead of the result of thorough preparation, it had been done in lieu of a greeting. It was the result of overwhelming talent.

Sagami Oniyuri was neither good nor evil.

She simply wanted to rejoice in her true, unrestricted freedom for as long as possible. But if the needle of her interest turned even slightly toward destruction, tens of thousands would die. No, it was even possible that one girl’s power could bring down an entire country.

The pure destruction was not the only threat. If she continued causing mass destruction on a scale too large to cover up, the people’s fear and dissatisfaction would grow to the bursting point and mass hysteria on the level of the witch hunts could sweep across the country. If enough people began to think the Shogunate was not going to save them, the entire system would collapse in no time.

After all, there was no way of testing to see if someone had psychic powers.

That unrestricted freedom would swallow up all else.

It was her lack of good or evil that made Oniyuri’s catastrophe unavoidable. You could not behave yourself as a good boy or girl so she would spare you and you could not slip her a bribe under the table. So once the people’s fear and dissatisfaction passed a certain threshold, the dominos would already be falling.

“We have to do something.” Silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki stretched her back in her sweat hoodie and kept a hand on her downturned forehead. “Sensei is right. We can’t just let her do this. If the Tenshukaku was wiped out and the Shogunate isn’t functioning, then we’ll have to do something ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Shirazaya Suiren over by the wall. “While I do find it hard to believe the Shogunate is no longer functioning, the spies like us can still act. If a monster is threatening the peace of our world, I can see no reason not to set out to slay it.”

“Don’t worry,” said bandaged John Kniferidge. “Like I said before, you aren’t alone. You have your connections with me and my queen. Besides, with her power, she could probably attack the Kingdom’s homeland by messing with the earth’s crust or something. This is already our problem.”

Sugiyado Souha thought for just a moment.

He realized just how blessed he was.

He bowed his head once before stating his conclusion.

“Then this will be the final battle. I’ll be placing everyone here on the board, so prepare yourselves.”

### 4: Briefing Before Facing the End

Listen up, everyone.

There is no need to review past combat data. I actually fought Oniyuri in that erased past, so I can explain her behavioral patterns to you.

She should make an appearance wherever I happen to be. Even if it is an obvious trap. For better or for worse, she is confident in her psychic Divine Decree power. She will assume she can break through whatever we have prepared for her.

Which means I want to avoid any kind of populated area.

We will use the container yard at New Yokohama Harbor’s #2 Wharf. That area has rapidly expanded thanks to the popularity of online shopping and flea market apps, but if we have the night guards leave, it will be almost entirely abandoned at night.

I want as much help as I can get, but I believe I taught you in that giant subway station that it’s hard for a makeshift team to immediately pull off professional level teamwork. So I would like to split you into your pre-existing teams and leave each team in charge of a specific section.

Ouka and Bara will act as our direct fighters.

Oniyuri has her psychic powers, but she is still human. She has vital points and she can bleed out. Do not feel more fear than necessary and do your job.

Hoozuki and Asagao will patrol the area and analyze the combat situation.

The earlier we locate Oniyuri’s presence, the better our odds. And after the initial clash, you need to constantly track the locations of enemy and ally alike while sharing that intel in real time. Intelligence is crucial in a ninja battle. If our soldiers lose their eyes and ears, they can’t win. We’re counting on you.

Guren and Suiren will be my bodyguards.

I hate to say it, but I can’t join the battle properly with these injuries, so I’m counting on you two. That might make you sound like passive defenders, but since Oniyuri’s top priority will be going after me, you will be on the front line.

John, you focus on providing logistical support since you lost your knight armor.

Arrange for a motorboat we can use to escape out to sea if my students screw this up. Our opponent can throw lava at us, but the vast ocean should rapidly cool the lava and make it a whole lot less deadly. You are our final safety net. Don’t let your guard down.

And one last thing.

Needless to say, Oniyuri can control a whole lot of lava using Divine Decree. Think of it less like fire and more like powerful acid being magnetically pulled around. That means moving around on the ground will be suicide – you’ll just be swallowed up by that scorching lava. Always take the high ground on piles of containers or a gantry crane or wherever. But height alone isn’t good enough. Don’t forget to choose a location that has at least two escape routes. Fail to do that and you will die.

The lava does not just form an ocean or a flood. It responds to Oniyuri’s will and moves around like it has a mind of its own. I said it’s seemingly being magnetically pulled around, right? That means keeping the high ground only gets you so far. Let your guard down and you’ll be taken out even there, so be careful.

Do you understand the situation now?

Oniyuri is not an easy opponent to beat, but there is no such thing as a truly unbeatable enemy. I want you to surpass me by doing what I once failed to do: defeat Oniyuri.

Good luck.

I will see you on the battlefield.

The promised time of 2 AM arrived.

Twintail Kuhou Ouka had arrived at New Yokohama Harbor’s #2 Wharf with her undeveloped figure dressed in her ninja outfit of a bodysuit, a sleeveless kimono top, and a front and back skirt. She looked around worriedly, causing the red rope hanging from the back of her hips to sway like a cat’s tail.

“He’s not here?” she muttered under her breath before speaking to the other ninjas hidden in the darkness. “Bara, Asagao! Have you seen Sensei!?”

“No,” said the bright red ringlet curls girl in an oiran-style outfit that left her elbows bare. She crossed her arms in a way that lifted up her chest and the sash that dangled down in place of a front skirt fluttered in the night breeze while she looked in a different direction.

She viewed the blonde twins who were leaning against a metal container with a combination of a sleeveless kimono top and a pleated miniskirt that gave them a cheerleader-like silhouette.

“We have not seen him either.”

“But that would mean…”

The injured knight in a flight suit and leather jacket had come all this way for his old friend, but now he breathed a heavy sigh while scratching at his head.

Then he threw his tablet full of mission information to the ground.

“That son of a bitch!! He intentionally gave us the wrong location! Is he trying to do it all himself, just like he did back then!?”

### 5: Once More

Why he could not bring the others with him could not have been more obvious.

First of all, Oniyuri was powerful. There was no guarantee they could win even if they worked together to fight her and, even if they managed to win, who could say how many of those beautiful girls would have bubbling lava dumped over their heads in the process. He could not force that choice onto them.

And second.

He knew it made him dumb as could be, but even after losing everything, Sugiyado Souha still could not imagine defeating Sagami Oniyuri while she continued to crawl through the darkness. He could not imagine killing her and just moving on.

He wanted to save her.

After all, what was different about her from other people? What made her different from Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, Shizukuma Asagao, Shirazaya Guren, Shirazaya Suiren, or even the ordinary girls who walked through the city eating ice cream?

After his final mission, he had hoped to become an instructor and that dream had come true.

It was too late to start working to protect people once the action had already begun, so he wanted to make sure they were prepared in advance. He wanted to give them the skill they needed to survive.

But.

However.

He had also wanted one more name on his list of students: Sagami Oniyuri. No, she was the reason for it all in the first place. He had met a fundamentally misguided girl on the battlefield and he had wished for a place that could teach her what was right. He had wished to give her a chance at a real life. That was what had motivated him in everything he had done since.

He felt like he had reduced the number of girls like Oniyuri since then. Now that Ouka’s group could laugh together as friends, they would not have to wander the world with such a dark look in their eyes.

But that did not mean he had saved Oniyuri herself.

He had long since given up on that.

He had bit his lip and hoped that carrying an impossible dream would at least give him the drive he needed to accomplish other important things.

But now she had reappeared before him.

She was once more within arm’s reach.

Now was the time to risk his life.

He would not have another shot at this.

So after sending his irreplaceable students and other acquaintances away, he had searched through his apartment.

He had needed to face his past.

He had needed to face what a foolish, inexperienced, and dazzlingly bright person he had been back then.

This battle was too much to get by using the Fierce Fang air-pressure kunais he had come up with to compensate for his scarred body. But another weapon slept in this room. He had never been able to actually throw it out and had even kept up with its maintenance.

He owned a ninja sword called Salvation & Punishment.

The blade was contained in a black scabbard wrapped over and over in a long, long decorative cloth. The sword was slightly longer than a normal katana and it had no curve.

Including the scabbard, it weighed 8.7kg.

Meanwhile, his upper limit was 10kg. His normal clothing weighed 1kg, so even if he left behind all his other ninja gear, this was cutting it close. In a risky battle when any kind of unexpected thing could happen at any time, a leeway of 300g was simply not enough.

That ninja weapon was only useful when he was planning to only fight a 1-on-1 battle with a specific opponent.

“I know it’s presumptuous of me to ask this of you after so much time.”

He had a self-deprecating smile on his lips.

His fingertips wandered as he nervously reached out.

He had completed the ritual he had tasked himself with.

And he opened his mouth.

“But just once more, will you help me save that girl?”

He grabbed it.

His trembling hand held the symbol of his former glory.

While feeling the weight of Salvation & Punishment like it was the weight of his own life, a single ninja finally set out for the final showdown.

He would reach out to a girl trapped at a dead end, offer her what he had, and give her a different path in life.

That was all he hoped for. As a teacher.

### 6: A Late Night Date with a Wanted Criminal

He had no scientific evidence.

But everything he needed to pursue Sagami Oniyuri was found hidden in the past.

Specifically, in the words they had exchanged during their truly deadly battle based on the odd and inexplicable connection they had developed as not quite enemies and not quite allies.

“I can’t help but be drawn to things that claim to be the ‘most’, the ‘biggest’, or whatever else, no matter how cheap it might sound,” she had once said. “Buildings are especially prone to that kind of language. Japan is crawling with buildings that claim to be the tallest, the biggest, or the most beautiful. Ah ha ha. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve actually snuck into a lot of those at night.”

That told him exactly where to go first. He only had 300g to spare. He had roughly wrapped Salvation & Punishment in a plain colored cloth to carry it around with him, he wore his usual short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants, and he covered his mouth with a large scarf while making his way there.

The New Yokohama Aeromonolith.

At 1000m tall, that wide-range broadcast tower covered not just this domain, but all of Kantou. Needless to say, it had recently broken the old record to become “the tallest building”. No matter how isolationist the country tried to be, this island was a fusion of countless cultures and that brought new cultural change.

“…”

Steel beams were complexly arranged to make the structure more solid, the hexagonal exterior was covered in reinforced glass, and the slight opacity of the windows were used to draw various kinds of laser art on the tower. But at 2 in the morning, the shopping mall at the bottom was closed, and the tower’s lights were off. It was wrapped in true darkness, but just as Sugiyado stepped over the thick chain hanging between the metal poles meant to keep cars out, a lovely voice shook his heart.

“Good evening.”

“Oniyuri.”

No one knew how many Hidden Ones the Shogunate had, but two of them were reunited here.

This was not some fancy location. A girl with long black hair stood with her arms behind her back in the center of the ordinary concrete square built in front of a mall. If not for the late hour and the cutting-edge ninja outfit she wore, it might have looked like they were meeting up for a date.

She wore a bodysuit, a white sleeveless kimono top, and a front skirt. That combat equipment used a spiderweb structure and its expansion and contraction was controlled by a processor. The white clothing looked like an ancient queen’s dress or like a surgical gown.

Sagami Oniyuri may not have held a distinction between combat and days off. This may have been the only way she had been taught to approach people.

Who was at fault there?

Was this really something that could be resolved with weapons and armor?

“Um…are you okay now?”

“I am, now that you mention it. Sorry about earlier. When I use my psychic powers, my other senses fade away. It’s kind of like being in a dream.”

Based on that, you might think she was alternating between sane and insane states.

But she was not.

The depths of that girl were deeper than that.

The line she considered sane was already well within the stagnation of madness. There was no essential difference between the two worlds of which she spoke. She might seem calm now, but she was still floating in some psychedelic world only she understood.

He had misread that in the past.

He had assumed his words would reach her when she was relatively stable, so he had attempted to contact her…and it had backfired in the worst way.

Approaching her was not about waiting for the right timing. If you were not prepared to attempt it at her worst, you should never try it at all.

He had to face her madness.

He could not flee from her psychedelic side.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” She looked up at the giant silhouette towering into the night sky. Her long glossy black hair blew in the night breeze. “I want to be free and not be tied down by anyone. That was the only thing on my mind, yet I was still following the usual path I had created for myself. I fit the pattern well enough for you to catch up with me. Almost like I was tying myself down to put my mind at ease.”

“Did you want someone to find you?”

Hearing that, she turned back toward him with the night breeze blowing into the open sides of her top and passing through below her chest.

She looked surprised at first, but then her eyes narrowed gently.

“That sure is a romantic interpretation.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

He scratched the scar on his nose and she let out a soft sigh.

“I don’t think I have it in me to plan out anything like that. I don’t know how you view me, but I’m a lot more aggressive than that. I’m not going to sit around waiting to see what the other person does.”

He heard a sizzling sound like someone had pushed in a car’s cigarette lighter. He heard it from more than one direction. And the number of sounds continue to grow all around the two of them.

Was this a sign of danger?

No. She was her normal self. She was not in a bad mood.

She licked her lips and the wind blew a few strands of hair between her lips as she continued speaking.

The fruit of death began to give off a sweet aroma.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“I’m starting to get bored. Can you show me to somewhere more interesting?”

The darkness was swept away all at once. The concrete ground was now orange and bubbling.

She could control this liquid that was even more dangerous than fire.

It would quickly form a great sea that would sweep everything else away.

That poor girl only knew how to approach people like this, or by mechanically manipulating them through calculated Machiavellianism.

The adults had raised her this way, creating exactly the monster they had wanted. No, since the Tenshukaku had ended up splattered with blood, she may have been an even greater monster than they had wanted. They had created the strongest ninja like they wanted, but now no one could control her. Her designers had misread the situation.

But Sugiyado Souha slowly shook his head in the face of that overwhelming power.

He felt no fear. He only felt sad.

That was why he had chosen to once more face his past defeat.

“And if I refuse?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I don’t know how you view me, but I’m a lot more aggressive than that.”

The boiling lava covered the surface.

She touched her long tongue with her index finger.

A moment later, Sugiyado Souha jumped 10m straight up.

His spine ached.

He only had 300g to spare. Even if it was mostly psychological, he still felt like he was walking on thinner ice than with his usual air-pressure kunais.

(Ow. I really am going to have to use every trick in the book for this one!!)

He removed the thin cloth covering up his sheathed ninja sword, discarded the cloth into the lava, and landed on the railing of the mall’s second story passageway. Sagami Oniyuri laughed when she saw that.

Her switch had been thrown.

She was floating a meter above the lava sea with her legs positioned neatly side by side. She toyed with the stray hairs in her mouth.

“Oh, how lovely.”

She clasped her hands together in front of her face and shifted them to the side, almost like she was begging him for something. She continued smiling throughout.

“So you can do it when you try.”

The scorching lava roared below her as it took in oxygen. He did not hesitate. He immediately turned his back and fled from that girl whose ninja outfit looked like an ancient queen’s dress. The entrance to the mall at the bottom of the tower was of course locked, but he drew Salvation & Punishment, stuck it in the gap between the double doors, and swung it down to slice through the lock itself.

The lava defied gravity to form a rainbow-like arch. The glowing liquid weapon rushed in and filled the open-air passageway. More than that, it melted all the windows and an orange flash flood burst inside, but he had already run up a stopped escalator to escape to the next floor up.

It was not normal to seek out destructive power with a ninja tool.

He had not corrected Ouka with Midnight Tempest because she showed a lot of unique growth in that direction, but that was not how a ninja’s tools were meant to be used. Even the kunais Sugiyado usually used were meant to expand one’s options by digging holes that could not be dug barehanded.

So the same was true of the ninja sword.

His previous leap was something like a pole vault using the compressed air pile driver installed in the sword’s scabbard. It was the same basic idea as Fierce Fang, but the greater size of the scabbard allowed a lot more instant nitrogen foam to be contained within. He could use it multiple times without swapping out cartridges.

In fact, his Fierce Fang was really a downgraded product that borrowed that one portion of his ninja sword. While suffering from his old wounds, he had let go of the sword he had once relied on with his life and instead split its abilities up and carried them around separately.

The sword had a tungsten steel blade because he needed a sharp enough edge to slice through locks and thick chains. It had a few other gimmicks included as well, but they all had their origin in mobility rather than combat.

His immediate defeat against Sagami Oniyuri earlier had been because the air-pressure kunais alone left him with nowhere to stand while the lava sea pushed in, so he had been helpless when the raging sun had burst. But if he had been able to freely move around in that hell, he might have been able to continue fighting.

Showing off obvious firepower was a job for the samurai and knights. A ninja first had to secure their freedom of movement, whether it was on the wall, on the ceiling, on the water, or in the air. They would select the option everyone else had written off as impossible and surpass their opponent’s expectations. That confusion was a ninja’s greatest weapon.

However…

(Gh!?)

The bolts in his spine ached. The springs replacing the ligaments in his legs screamed. The external support surpassed what a normal body could do, so the nonhuman parts within him caused a rejection reaction. He was made all too aware of how little 300g was and he could feel death approaching. This was why he had stopped using this ninja sword specialized for mobility.

That nameless armored samurai had been shocked to find Sugiyado did not use a cutting-edge ninja outfit made with a spiderweb structure, a high-polymer water-absorbing gel, and electric potential elastic belt cylinders, but it was quite the opposite. That high-quality equipment had a different weight and output, so he could not use them properly with his injured body. It was about compatibility, not a conviction or stubborn pride.

He had nothing to boast about.

He knew all too well that he was washed up.

He knew he was nothing but baggage who should stick to the logistical support of being an instructor.

(But I will have my way here. Just this once! Just for tonight!!)

“Yes, yes. You really are entertaining.”

After covering the lower floor with boiling lava, Oniyuri floated up along the escalator while smiling. Her flowing black hair and surgical gown of a ninja outfit absorbed the glow of the lava, she embraced her own breathtakingly beautiful body, and she gave off a sweet aroma.

She did not think of this as killing someone.

“I love someone who is not broken by fear. It feels like finally getting to stretch your arms and legs after being stiffly curled up for far too long.”

This was normal for her. It was no different from giving a casual greeting to someone you met on the street. The people who immediately died were like an awkward silence on the elevator and Sugiyado was like someone who would keep the conversation going.

“And I love freedom as well. Oh, how I envy you.”

She stuck out her alluring tongue and another attack manifested from her.

The entire 1000m structure tilted far too easily.

This was what lava was.

It erupted from the depths of the earth and destroyed all structures in its path. It did not matter if that structure was the tallest broadcast tower. Once the ground below it had been melted from a solid into a liquid – from dirt and rock into ultra-hot magma – no structure could remain standing. Not even a feudal lord’s castle.

In another few minutes, the mall, the broadcast facilities, and the upper observation deck would all collapse like a stick stabbed into a pile of sand. When caught in that fall and collapse, no flesh-and-blood human could survive.

But that was fine.

While even the directions of up and down were shaken in the mall, Sugiyado Souha continued ever upwards. He only wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and loose pants with no equipment to boost his strength, so he only had that one ninja sword to assist him in running, leaping, and continuing onward.

The entire mall was 5 stories tall. The 6th floor contained the ticket counter for the observation deck. From there, it was a straight shot to the observation deck at 700m using either the elevators or emergency stairs. The remaining height could only be climbed using the work gondolas or open-air stairs only used by workers.

It was like being caught in a never-ending flood. Each consecutive floor of the mall was covered in and consumed by the lava while he climbed over the ticket counter and ran to the emergency stairs.

He had finally left the mall and arrived at the actual broadcast tower.

Beyond the reinforced glass and complex arrangement of steel beams, he climbed further while awash in the light of the moon from above and lava from below. He ran up the emergency stairs that coiled around the central elevator shaft that contained a few different elevators.

There was no sign of Sagami Oniyuri.

But he did not relax. He had not shaken her. He had simply lost sight of her.

The wall right next to him glowed orange.

(The elevator shaft!?)

The wall melted and burst out toward him as a 2000 degree weapon. It truly was like a scorching flash flood. Trying to block that with his sword would have been foolish.

Simply following the stairs up would not be enough anymore, so he twisted around and leaped out onto the complex arrangement of steel beams beyond the railing and just inside the reinforced glass.

He gathered strength using the compressed nitrogen pile driver installed in Salvation & Punishment’s scabbard and flew upwards with his spine protesting.

Once the glowing drops from the melted elevator shaft had settled down, Oniyuri emerged from within.

She looked up at him and spoke in amusement in her ninja outfit that’s bodysuit accentuated her figure and that otherwise looked like an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown.

She licked her lips like she was feasting on the fierce high found in a true fight to the death.

“Oh? You shouldn’t have been able to predict that, so how did detect me through the wall? Hee hee.”

Or was she simply applying that state to her own mind?

In the air, he untied the exceedingly long decorative cloth wrapped around his sword’s scabbard and threw the weighted end toward a steel beam overhead. After confirming it had caught solidly on the beam, he swung like a pendulum and ran along the steel beams near the glass interior wall.

Scorching heat swept through that space.

Oniyuri gathered a ball of lava below her feet with Divine Decree and used its explosive power and the liquid’s jet propulsion to rocket upwards.

A direct hit from this would kill him instantly, but even if he dodged it, the lava being scattered in all directions would be devastating enough.

He desperately moved from the outer steel beams to the emergency stairway railing toward the center and then jumped to a different steel beam, but a sweet voice slipped into his ears along with the wet sound of the saliva on her tongue.

“Hee hee.”

Black-haired Sagami Oniyuri had moved out ahead of Sugiyado after missing him. Her front skirt fluttered as she pointed her slender index finger skywards.

“The sun☆”

The compressed lava burst and flooded the world.

The New Yokohama Aeromonolith was like a giant transparent smokestack that used reinforced glass to cover the entire hexagonal tower built from steel beams.

Boiling lava filled that entire space and gravity pulled it down like a suspended ceiling. It swallowed up and melted everything in its path, including the steel beams and reinforced glass.

“!!”

His soul told him to run – to get as far away as he could. He needed to move down to avoid the deadly lava sealing things off overhead. His short-sleeved dress shirt and pants were no defense against that. A single drop would burn him to the bone.

But he chose to ignore his instincts.

He could not survive if he only ever thought one step ahead. Besides, the ground was already covered in the orange lava.

If he wanted to save her, and if he wanted to seize victory here, he had to continue upwards. He had to face the falling lava!!

“Ohhh!!”

He let out a quick breath.

He twirled around with the tungsten steel ninja sword in hand and intentionally altered his center of gravity to throw his axis off balance and create an irregular rotation.

Steel beams crisscrossed in a complex pattern overhead. Since the melting point of steel was around 1500 degrees, it was no match for the 2000+ degree lava, but it was not liquefied in the blink of an eye. With even a slight moment of resistance, the liquid lava would splash off of it and the suspended ceiling would be torn through. It was a lot like threading a needle, but there were small gaps there.

Those slight safe paths wriggled like amoebas and kept opening and closing.

By slipping through there, he passed through the blazing hot suspended ceiling.

He continued up.

He continued on.

“Ah ha ha! Incredible!!”

When he caught up to her in an instant and began running alongside her as she flew with her psychic Divine Decree, Oniyuri’s face bloomed in a truly unrestrained smile. With a stray stand of hair in her mouth, she licked her lips with her seductive tongue.

She held herself tight in her arms, which seemed to accentuate the chest of her sleeveless kimono top, and she seemed focused on the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

“I see, I see. The pain from the bolts in your spine let you detect the faint magnetism from the moving lava. You transform your risks and weaknesses into weapons and you obtain further freedom from your irremovable restraints. Incredible. Yes, freedom truly is incredible!!”

“…”

Was that how it looked to her?

But the freedom she sought should not have been restricted to this small and bloody world. Why could she not envision a freedom where she could get together with friends for karaoke or look up at a planetarium with a romantic partner? She had forgotten that even she had written it off as impossible and turned her back on that hurdle.

He had to teach her how big the world really was.

He had to correct her so she could stand on her own two feet in that world and reach an understanding with it.

So.

So he could not afford to lose here. No matter what.

More and more steel and concrete melted and lost shape and the resultant liquid was guided by Divine Decree to attack him like a great serpent. The entire broadcast tower groaned ominously and the angle of its tilt grew. The New Yokohama Aeromonolith was not going to last much longer. Sooner or later, it would fall. He knew that, but he still climbed it.

He climbed up, but even that concept was changed little by little as the tower tilted.

His spine ached. The grim reaper was approaching from behind.

Climbing the stairs was not enough. The complex arrangement of steel beams was not all-powerful. He finally set foot on the reinforced glass. It felt like a steep slope, but that was because the vertical glass had tilted enough to stand on. The windows must not have been built to withstand the distortion in the overall structure because more and more cracks formed in them. Once he started stepping on it, it broke and shattered. He could only rely on the slight moment of resistance as it broke, so it was a lot like running on water.

“Ah ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

The pursuing girl’s empty laughter seemed to ring endlessly. The simple act of walking lifted up one’s organs and the shock of taking flight and landing had to be considerable. Her implants should have been replaced since they gradually shifted out of place every time she moved, but they had been left in there, making her life as fragile as glasswork. She wanted to leave the destructive marks of her life on the world in order to celebrate her freedom that could come to an end any minute or any second.

She was strong enough to follow that path wherever it might lead, but also hopelessly and pitiably weak.

She may have been the strongest, but no one would ever follow her. No one would praise her or look up to her.

“What will you do?”

Instead of using the unsteady footing, the psychic girl used Divine Decree to fly around within the tower. Her speed caused her skirt to whip around and she asked a question with a smile.

She almost sounded like someone sad that a fireworks show was ending.

“This game of tag is fun and all, but we’re approaching the end of the course.”

She was right.

The tower was now angled at more than 45 degrees as it leaned out over the city below. He passed through the general observation deck and used a maintenance door to burst outside. The chill of the late-night air hit him while he ran directly along the exposed steel beams.

This was past the point any ordinary visitors would go.

Only the workers were allowed on the giant antenna rod here.

Once he reached the very top, there would be nowhere else to go. Once he had nowhere to run, the rising orange lava would swallow him up.

He was approaching a hopeless precipice.

But he did not hesitate to answer while running alongside her.

“That’s none of your concern.”

“Ah ha ha!! Good, it sounds like you’ve got more fun planned for me!!”

The area around him exploded violently, the entire scene melted around him, and the amount of lava rapidly increased. It all moved to attack him.

(I won’t give up on you.)

He clenched his teeth, ignored the pain from his overloaded back and knees, and renewed his resolve.

(Even if every last doctor on the planet throws in the towel and even if every spokesperson of justice in the world condemns you, I will never give up on your future – on your possibility! Oniyuri!!)

The top of the diagonally tilted tower was approaching fast.

Their game of chicken was coming to an end. He could not move past that point.

Yet there was a smile on his lips.

But this smile was very different from hers.

“I was waiting for this.”

“?”

He ran across several parabolic antennae, reached the antenna rod, and came to a complete stop at the very top of that 1000m tower.

While rocketing upwards with the lava’s explosive power, Oniyuri moved to crash into his hips with bone-shattering speed. But he twisted his body to dodge her at the last second.

And after passing him by, the girl dressed like an ancient queen seemed to notice something was wrong. She licked her beautiful lips.

“What…is this?”

Her flight wavered as she started to move past the tower and into the night sky.

Just like a stalling aircraft.

She quickly flailed her arms and legs to regain control and found the top of the tower in front of her again.

That was when she seemed to catch on.

Sugiyado Souha smoothly drew Salvation & Punishment’s uncurved blade. That thick tungsten steel blade was designed to cut wires more than human muscle and bone. The tip reflected the cold moonlight and hot lava glow while pointing calmly at floating Oniyuri.

“I…see. Ah ha ha.”

“To be honest, your flight was a much bigger problem than the more obvious lava. I mean, you can fly from Hokkaido to Okinawa in half an hour with Divine Decree, so you could directly combat a stealth fighter with your psychic powers. The worst case scenario would be if you flew circles at Mach 2 and at an altitude of 10,000m while covering the surface below with lava. If you had gone for that kind of strategic bombing tactics, even I would have been helpless to stop you.”

But she had not done that.

Why not?

“Your flight has its limits.”

“…”

“I don’t know if it’s a physical thing or a mental issue of control, but it works kind of like a hovercraft or ground-effect vehicle. You can pass freely over the ocean or the land, but you can’t fly all that high. Had you never noticed that limit yourself? I’ve never seen you fly more than 5m off of the ground or away from a wall. Not now and not in the past.”

In other words, the pointed end of a tower was the best terrain shape to stop her. She was reliant on the tower, so she could not move beyond a spherical space with a radius of 5m. She could not use her fearsome speed of Mach 2 or 3 to continually fall back while destroying him with lava attacks.

Her position as the strongest had ironically never given her a chance to test the limits of her psychic powers.

What did she feel while facing someone who understood her better than she did?

“Ha ha.”

She formed a truly and hopelessly gentle smile that caught a stray strand of hair while she floated in the night sky.

“Simply incredible. But it’s hard to say you’ve captured me here. I mean, I can move anywhere within 5m of my footing, right? That means I can fly anywhere I want along the 1000m length of the tower.”

“Yes.”

He had thought of that.

So…

“I just have to sever that to fully bind you.”

The battlefield was sliced apart.

The impressive broadcast tower was an enormous mass of steel, but the very top was only a delicate antenna rod. It was only about 50cm thick and it was hollow on the inside, so it was actually thinner than the logs or makiwara he used in training.

It was possible.

He only had to use the tungsten steel ninja sword that had been designed to slice through thick chains and locks like a pair of wire cutters. He only had to convert weight, speed, and a sharp edge into a destructive force.

That allowed him to cut away the very top of that 1000m tower.

“Ah,” said Oniyuri.

She even forgot to smile.

By then, her body had already been dragged away. She could only fly within 5m of solid footing, so if that footing was taken away, she was taken with it.

Of course, Sugiyado was standing on the tip of the tower he had cut away.

Both of them were dumped out into the night sky.

She panicked at having her flight taken from her for the first time, but there was no disturbance at all in his eyes.

This time, the Hidden One faced the other Hidden One.

And the ninja whispered while holding the blade that had once failed to reach her.

“Let’s make this a fair fight, Oniyuri.”

### 7: What I Wanted to Teach You

Oniyuri could do nothing while she fell.

Her freedom of flight had been taken from her. Out in the open air, heating her surroundings with Divine Decree could not create new lava. She may have been able to lift up the existing lava from the ground, but it was too far away to stop Sugiyado Souha as he tried to cross blades with her right this instant.

Nevertheless.

Her wings had been taken from her, but in something like a magic trick, she pulled a standard 30cm dagger from her risqué surgical gown of a ninja outfit. Their weapons clashed a total of 6 times.

She really was a genius and the strongest in everything she did.

“Ha ha.”

She was unable to fight the earth’s gravity and fell toward the carpet of boiling lava below, but she laughed all the while. Her hair whipped around her and she alluringly licked her lips.

“Ah ha ha!! Incredible! Only you could keep up with me like this! Only you could speak with me like this! Yes, yes. I have never felt so fulfilled. It’s fun. So much fun!!”

If not for the speed of her fall, she might have clapped her hands together and held her sides as she laughed.

But Sugiyado Souha was not laughing.

“Hey, Oniyuri,” he said. “A truly happy person has more than just fun and they don’t push away everything else. We can call ourselves happy because we have overcome the hard times by working together with others.”

In that instant, he saw her expression silently but undeniably collapse. She finally had the look of a girl her age. Or so it looked to him.

“That’s more like it.”

She may have already known this.

She may have known it, but she had not had anyone to ask for help and was forced to continue on the only path she had. Because she was the strongest and a genius, turning back may not have been an option for her.

“You look much more human and pretty like that, Oniyuri.”

That was why he felt the way he did.

Yes, she had once slashed him in the back and he still carried the effects of that with him. Yes, she had bitten at the hand held out to help her and cruelly betrayed him. Yes, she possessed a soul that actively chose to trample on her own hope.

But when he had seen the way she lived her life, he had wanted to save her.

He had wanted to tell her she could live her life without following that path that was like walking on broken glass.

That was all he had wanted, and he was dead set on pulling it off.

Strength gathered in the hand holding Salvation & Punishment.

He suppressed the fear of falling into the abyss with her.

And he looked straight at her.

This was not an enemy to defeat. This was not an evil to be slain. She had simply strayed from the path and fallen into the mud without ever being taught how to find her way back.

So.

In that case.

“Isn’t this enough, Oniyuri?”

“Kh.”

“I will teach you everything you should have been taught in the first place! So stop here!! You can’t make any progress without first owning up to what you’ve done wrong!!”

He would catch her.

No matter how many times she fell, he would stay with her until she returned to the path she was originally meant to walk. He would work at it until she could do it.

Seeing her had made him want to be that kind of person.

And that was why he had become an instructor.

So he could not forget that here. No matter how many bolts he had in his spine and no matter what had replaced his torn ligaments, he could not forget that. He could not!!

“Gh!?”

With the seventh slash, her dagger finally came to a stop. His ninja sword had landed a solid blow on it. But that was not his only weapon.

He had the scabbard.

He spun it from his hip to push up the bottom end like a seesaw and it contacted the side of her dagger. The instant nitrogen foam burst out and the fearsome pile driver slammed into the side of the dagger’s blade, shattering it. The hand holding the remaining haft was knocked outwards and the kunoichi’s body arched backwards.

She was entirely defenseless now.

This was his first and last chance to get a unilateral attack in on her.

The boy reversed his ninja sword in front of the unarmed girl.

He would end it with his eighth attack.

He knew exactly what to aim for.

Her form-fitting cutting-edge ninja outfit used a spider web structure and her odd additions to that looked like an ancient queen’s dress or a surgical gown. That outfit’s defenses could stop a rifle bullet, but he ignored all of that while holding Salvation & Punishment in both hands and stabbing it toward her stomach.

It did not pierce through, but its weight could not be ignored.

This was a mass of well-forged tungsten steel, so the impact it provided had to be greater than a blow from a boxer.

“Oniyuri, this is your first lesson.”

He ignored the pain in his back as he raised his voice.

If he could find victory here, he did not care what happened to his breaking body. Some fights in life were simply that important.

So…

“I will teach you how to lose! And how to accept that defeat!!”

With a great roar of impact, Oniyuri doubled over, her fingertips went limp, and the artificial madness in her eyes faded away.

### 009. Epilogue

At that time, the New Yokohama Aeromonolith had been tilted at more than 45 degrees, but it was still a 1000m tower. When he had cut off the tip of the antenna rod to begin their freefall, they had to have been more than 200m up.

Settling things with Oniyuri was meaningless if the two of them simply plunged into the lava below.

He could not let it end here. He could not free her trapped soul if things did not continue on from here.

If he could not take care of his students, how could he call himself an instructor?

“Kh!!”

He sheathed his ninja sword, stretched out his arms and legs to reduce air resistance, and accelerated in the same way sky divers adjusted their speed. Sagami Oniyuri had been falling ahead of him, so he pulled her limp, unconscious body toward him.

He could ignore her weight since they were falling.

(But this is going to be hell once we decelerate and the weight hits me. This will go well past my back’s 10kg limit!!)

Salvation & Punishment was the only thing he had to rely on.

The tool wrapped around the scabbard was meant to function as a rope, but it was actually a sash-like decorative cloth. It was thin enough to see through to the other side, but it could still gather air.

By folding it back and forth on itself every few meters, he could turn it into a large parachute. It might look like a bunch of bananas since each individual parachute section would be long and narrow, but that did not matter as long as the total area was enough.

His body was suddenly pinned in place.

Oniyuri’s weight assaulted him all at once.

“Ah…kahhh!!!???”

He had broken the rule he had been following all this time.

And he swiftly paid the price.

It felt like sparks were exploding at a point in his spine. His vision really did shatter and he nearly bit his tongue. All of his senses felt vague and unclear, but he still managed to hold tightly onto the girl in his arms. That alone he would not give in on.

They drifted below the broadcast tower leaning out over the city and he desperately tried to catch his breath while his vision refused to fully return.

He could not even focus on his earphone.

He would not let go of that girl no matter what.

He focused only on that while clenching his teeth.

Temporarily losing his vision ended up being painful indeed.

He misread when he would land and misjudged the timing at which he contacted the ground. Parachutes might look like they brought people gently and safely to the ground, but it was not uncommon for soldiers to break an ankle or knee after screwing up the landing.

“Gwah, ahh!?”

Instead of the lava-covered road, he had landed on the roof of some multi-tenant building. The hard landing produced a devastating sound from his legs as the springs replacing the ligaments shattered. He had failed to absorb the shock properly. He could not even stand up anymore and the parachute made from the decorative cloth dragged him to the side as the night wind blew at it.

However.

To the very end, he did not let go of Sagami Oniyuri’s warmth in his arms.

“Vio…Queen Violia.” He finally managed to touch his earphone and get out a scratchy voice while still collapsed on the roof. “Sugiyado Souha to Queen Violia. End radio silence. It’s all over.”

“I don’t know why, but your ninjas and even my John have been making a real fuss over the radio. What in the world happened out there?”

“Ow… I have one thing to ask you in the end here.”

“I’m willing to do anything as long as you stop calling this the end, Nii-sama.”

He heard some static.

He turned his head even though his vision had barely recovered and was still full of noise, but he did manage to see who was waiting there for him.

“John. I’ll admit this was a pure gamble, so I’m glad you were the first to get here.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked the man.

Sugiyado slowly exhaled before answering.

“I want you to look after Oniyuri for me. Her body is the same as it was after those experiments from years ago. She still has the Divine Decree devices needed for her psychic powers. Can you have those surgically removed back in the Kingdom? You only have to use X-rays or ultrasound or whatever to get an image of them, use a 3D printer to create a mockup, and replace them. I know I can’t count on the Shogunate to do this since they would never give up their successful specimen. But you’re different, right?”

“…”

“The parts you will surgically remove are some of the Shogunate’s biggest secrets. If you take away Oniyuri’s psychic powers, you will have eliminated the reason why Queen Violia was targeted back then. Not a bad deal. Right, John? And Your Majesty?”

“You idiot. You didn’t need a word beyond ‘look after her for me’,” spat out the man in a flight suit and leather jacket.

“Hey, are you sure you only want us to look after Oniyuri?” asked the queen on his earphone. “Two is no more difficult than one, so we could take you too.”

“That would be great.” He smiled while still collapsed on the roof. “But then I couldn’t end this properly. If no one is around to take the blame for all of this, someone else will be placed on the chopping block as a scapegoat. Most likely Guren and Suiren. This incident was all about our past, so I can’t let anything happen to those girls over this.”

“You mean?”

“Yes, it’s the only option.”

Sugiyado Souha was unable to get up, so John crouched down and gently lifted Sagami Oniyuri from his arms. The man still had one arm in a sling, but he did not let any pain show on his face.

“Can I count on you?”

“Of course you can,” spat out John while turning around, but Sugiyado could not even watch him go.

The next footsteps were already approaching.

He heard two sets walking in perfect unison, so he slowly raised his hands.

“I surrender.”

He knew what he had to say.

“I threatened my students into doing what I wanted so I could restore my honor!! They were in a state of diminished capacity and cannot be held accountable for what they did!!”

“Do you honestly think anyone will buy that ridiculous excuse?”

“Whatever your reasons were, we all know you wanted to end this as quickly as possible and even risked your life to do so.”

He was glad to hear them say that.

But he could not agree. Oniyuri had escaped and the four primary criminals had not been captured. Meanwhile, the Shogunate had taken considerable damage. The only way to pacify the Shogunate was to hand them a ringleader who had been pulling all the strings behind the scenes of everything caused by Ouka’s group and by Oniyuri.

Someone had to be thrown in jail. Even before Oniyuri’s involvement, Sugiyado had known it could only end like this.

Kuhou Ouka, Hanasawa Bara, Nantou Hoozuki, and Shizukuma Asagao.

Shirazaya Guren and Shirazaya Suiren.

He had only ever been focused on protecting every last one of them and not letting any one of them die.

Guren’s throat trembled and Suiren restlessly toyed with her right earlobe.

“An unreasonable conclusion will only draw those girls to a new battlefield,” said one. “Just like that past mission led to the current fight.”

“Distortions will only lead to misfortune and tragedy,” said the other. “Even if that decision appears to be the cleverest one to you.”

“That’s fine,” he said.

He did not lower his arms while still lying limply on the roof. His legs had been shattered, but he did not use his hands to support his weight. He had already decided those hands would stay up until the twins with red and white extensions to their blonde hair had handcuffed him.

“They should understand now that even their seemingly flawless Elite Ninja skills can be defeated. And with me in prison, the techniques I used could be passed on to the Shogunate. And thus to the Shogunate spies like you. They won’t be able to put together another criminal plot so easily.”

“That is not what we meant.”

“We do not approve of what they did, but do you really think they will be satisfied with this result? We all know they won’t.”

“Of course they won’t,” he spat out. “After everything they did, how could they ever conveniently get off scot-free, without losing anything? I am on their side 100%, but not even I am going to spoil them that much. The thing they most wanted to protect will be taken from them and thrown in prison because of their actions. …And they should count themselves very lucky that is all they lose. That trauma should be enough to ensure they never again use their ninja techniques for their own personal desires.”

“…”

Shirazaya Guren and Suiren fell silent for a while. Their reluctance to accept this was written plainly on their faces. He could tell they really were good girls. But he was not budging on this. He would have his way here.

He smiled thinly with his legs shattered and his hands raised.

“Please.”

“But…”

“Please. This will help you save face too. There is no other way to save everyone but me.”

“No one ever asked you to save them!!”

Come to think of it, that was true.

These twin sisters had not.

His four students had not.

Even Sagami Oniyuri had not.

They had all clenched their teeth, suppressed their tears, and fought against the cruel reality facing them.

They were all such strong girls. In a way, his half-assed meddling had condescendingly sullied their dignity and pride.

But there was no turning back now.

“Then I’ll have to ask it myself.”

This time – this one time – he would have his way no matter what.

“Guren, Suiren. Please help this frail and broken ninja. You’re the only people I can rely on in that hellhole we call the Shogunate.”

Silence followed.

The blonde twins tried to say something, but no words came out. They squeezed the white cloth of their slitted skirts as their hesitation continued without end.

But in the end, they were indeed strong.

“Sugiyado Souha.”

He heard a solid metallic sound. Guren, with the red extension to her blonde hair, had pulled a pair of handcuffs from her ninja outfit.

“On charges of inciting a largescale disturbance, providing false testimony, obstructing an official investigation, inciting a foreign threat by working with the Kingdom, hiding a crucial witness, and assisting her flight from the country…”

Her words faltered at that point. No, she had bit her adorable lip.

Suiren placed a hand on her shoulder, but Guren managed to get the words out of her trembling throat.

She renewed her resolve and finished her statement.

“You are under arrest.”

### 010. Afterword

Welcome, everyone. This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Ninjas! I have actually included them on occasion in A Certain Magical Index and the Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village that I wrote for another publisher. If you read Index’s SS2 in particular, you should be able to grasp my image of fictional ninjas.

Since I was writing about ninjas, I placed the main focus squarely on the desire to protect the heroine students while making everything else be a series of deceptions. That is different from a police story where you can focus on solving the case once all the surrounding information has been established. I just hope it was enjoyable enough to create a solid foundation for doing what I wanted to do.

The protagonist possessed a great power but was too kind to soak himself in the darkness and lost everything as a result. He can tell standing back up is only going to cause him to crash and burn like he once did, but he still struggles to save those girls regardless of what side they belong to. I hope you enjoyed it.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Tajima Ryuushi-san, to my editors Miki-san, Nakajima-san, Yamamoto-san, and Mitera-san, and to someone deserving special thanks. Giving them all unique kunoichi outfits instead of a standardized school uniform may have been a cruel request that emptied out the drawer of ideas all at once, so I am truly grateful you went along with it.

And I give my thanks to the readers. I love using this genre for minor characters, but I was honestly pretty nervous about using it as a main theme. I have nothing but thanks for all of you who still picked up this book. Thank you very much.

And I will end this here.

You’ve gotta go with kunais over shurikens, right!?

-Kamachi Kazuma

### 011. Beyond the Epilogue

It was a dark night.

On the surface, countless lights gathered together to create the vast nightscape of a city, but the rooftops of the skyscrapers were actually wrapped in deep shadows.

“What should we do, Ouka? If the records from that farce of a private trial are accurate, he’s probably being sent to Abashiri, which is practically a legend at this point. This will be our last definite shot at this.”

“I would love to,” said the twintail girl. “But Sensei wouldn’t want that.”

After everything they had experienced, that was the only thing they had learned.

But if they had learned that tiny lesson beforehand, they never would have caused that major incident in the first place.

Their teacher, Sugiyado Souha, had risked his life and his reputation to teach them that. He had remained their teacher to the end.

So they could never forget it.

An instructor’s true value was determined by the path their students took, so they would not make that mistake again.

So.

A defenseless prisoner transport truck and its escort vehicles passed by below them. They could have attacked that puny assortment of vehicles a hundred times and never failed even once.

“But this isn’t the end,” said silver ponytail Nantou Hoozuki while watching the vehicles drive away. “He might be in prison now, but once the Shogunate needs help, they will come to him, bow their heads, and beg him to solve whatever problem they’re having.”

Countless incidents of varying severity were occurring all over the country even now. Friction with foreign nations continued to grow, so no one could predict when some accident would lead to a true war.

While those four had left the Shogunate, they had been Elite Ninjas at the top of the Shogunate’s spy ranking system. They had seen a lot of classified information. They knew all too well that a precarious balancing act was underway to prevent the country from falling apart on its own.

So.

Shizukuma Asagao, the youngest, spoke last, in what almost sounded like a prophecy.

“The time will come when Sensei is needed once more. And it will arrive sooner than anyone expects.”

Inside the thick prisoner transport truck, the twin sisters were working as guards.

“Is there anything you need?”

“We will make as many concessions as we can, so just tell us what you want.”

They used soft, blunted voices that were not at all what a Shogunate spy would normally use when speaking to a violent criminal. The ordinary prison guards gave them quizzical looks, but the twins in white dresses paid them no heed.

Meanwhile, the boy smiled thinly with handcuffs on his wrists, his legs in casts, his back leaning against the wall, and his butt on the floor.

One of the twins wrapped her hands around his restrained ones.

He felt a solid object there. It may have been a small metal clip.

But he shook his head.

He could escape if he put his mind to it, but that would be meaningless.

His position seated on the floor must have been more comfortable for him than in a chair. His shoulders relaxed while he responded in that space surrounded by metal bars.

“In that case, could you bring me some Happy Churn? I’ll take as many of them as I can get.”

### 012. When The Cute Kunoichis Spied on Their Teacher's Secret 2

### Illustrations

- Cover

## Prologue

Avoid the Tomb at all costs.

Life in Abashiri’s special prison is bad enough as it is, but being sent there is a death sentence.

“Hey, you still alive? Looks like they won’t have to amputate your feet to save you, but what are you trying to accomplish? Is a guy like you hoping to be a tragic heroine or something?”

When Sugiyado Souha smelled disinfectant alcohol, he realized he must be in the medical building.

He still could not feel anything below his ankles.

He used just his arms to grab at the metal pipe railing and sit up in the bed, eliciting an exasperated sigh from the old man seated next to the bed.

He recognized that prisoner.

That fellow prisoner.

“Boy, you were only just released from the medical building, yet here you are again. This is Abashiri. I thought I warned you to avoid the Tomb.”

“It’s not like I had a choice in the matter.”

“My point was to not get on the bad side of the guards.”

The Tomb was a solitary confinement cell used to punish prisoners who broke the rules. All heating was shut off in that inescapable room, but they apparently built a pathway for the icy air from outside to pass directly below the floor, so the walls and floor were so cold your skin would stick to them. If you carelessly tried to lie down, you would either get frostbite or freeze to death. The point was to keep the prisoner from getting any sleep by preventing them from lying on the floor or leaning against the walls.

But the old man did not make that big a deal out of it.

“Why would you intentionally antagonize the guards? With your skill, sneaking up to the person you want should be second nature to you.”

“…”

“Do you refuse to use those skills for personal reasons? That’s an impressive ideal, but it’s only required for people on active duty. It means nothing to us retried folks who had everything stripped from us before we were thrown in a cell here.”

Sugiyado sighed.

He wore a bright orange jumpsuit. His special fiber ninja outfit and tank-destroying air pressure kunais were a thing of the past.

“The doc said you have light frostbite. You got a long stay in the medical building when you arrived here with your legs broken, but that’s not happening this time. You’re here for a few days at most.”

“I am aware of that.”

“You need to make up your mind before you’re released again. No one’s going to praise you if you choose to accept needless punishment and no one’s going to blame you if take the easy way out. You weren’t given a death sentence, so enjoy your life here the best you can. If you don’t, you’ll lose your life for no good reason.”

The old man in an identical jumpsuit stood up from his chair and left the medical room.

(…)

Sugiyado sank into thought now that he was alone.

Kuhou Ouka.

Hanasawa Bara.

Nantou Hoozuki.

Shizukuma Asagao.

Those four kunoichis were his students.

As was Sagami Oniyuri.

He had needed to covertly end the incident that began with them stealing a modular nuclear reactor. He had just barely avoided the worst-case scenario, but that had required acting on his own in ways that qualified as betraying the Shogunate. He was not going to be pardoned. He had simply been paying the price needed to save those girls, so he was not at all unsatisfied with his current circumstances.

However.

(If I do eventually leave this place.)

He had been running with all his might.

But now that he had time to stop and reflect on things…

(Is there anything I want to do then? I’m honestly afraid that absolute freedom would feel like too much pressure.)

The silence of this place seemed to squeeze at his very soul. The emptiness sapped the heat from his core even more than the Tomb had.

He heard a gentle knock on the door and the master of this room walked in. During the previous incident, he had failed a makeshift parachute descent while carrying Oniyuri and ended up shattering both his legs. This middle-aged female doctor had been looking after him since then.

“Are you alone?”

“I had someone with me a moment ago.”

“That’s fine with me as long as they aren’t an uninvited guest. Now, let’s see how your legs are doing.”

He sat up and she circled toward his legs.

She pulled back the thin blanket that would have raised eyebrows in an ordinary home but was a luxury in Abashiri.

And Sugiyado Souha made an announcement without even looking her way.

“Bara, I know it’s you.”

He heard a sweet and bewitching breath of laughter.

“Oh, what a shame. I was hoping you were kind enough to go along with this farce of a honeymoon despite noticing.”

There was no noticeable transition.

“The next thing he knew” was the only way he could describe it.

The middle-aged woman with somewhat loose skin standing in front of him was now an 18-year-old girl with her long red hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls and with her bright and curvy body adorned by an Oiran-style shoulder-baring kimono. She accentuated her large chest to a gratuitous extent, but she did not stop there. She retained an unnatural innocence at the center of that top-tier seduction, so she seemed second to none in the field of kunoichi sex appeal.

She was Hanasawa Bara.

A set of high-power coilguns known as Serpent Monster was woven into her hair and she excelled at disguises and diversions.

She held the position of Elite Ninja, the highest of the Shogunate’s officially acknowledged ranks.

And.

She was one of the students Sugiyado Souha had once trained over the internet.

“Why are you here?”

“Make no mistake here, Sensei. I did not come rushing in here because you had collapsed. We have been here from the beginning. That means Ouka and Hoozuki too.”

The bed springs creaked.

Bara had climbed up onto the bed on her arms and legs with a feline litheness. She was now straddling his legs while he sat up.

She rubbed against his chest and whispered to him.

“You look so lonely in here, so if there is anything at all you would like, just ask. It must be so boring in here with nothing but other men. Just say the word and I will show you the kunoichi techniques you had me trained in. I won’t hold anything back.”

He did not bat an eye as he responded.

“Do you really think that’s enough to distract me from the question of the real doctor’s wellbeing?”

“Now there’s a scary thought. But to give away the trick, it’s actually a shockingly peaceful way to take someone’s place.”

She looked like someone who had set up a major prank only for it to fail. The pouting lips were childish, but she was still up on the bed practically lying on top of her teacher.

Some beads of sweat must have soaked into her hair because a sweet aroma rose from those ringlet curls and her large chest.

“Sensei, when will you be coming back?”

“When my sentence is complete.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. If you want, we could easily get you out of this boring place.”

“Bara.”

“So what method would you like? A complete set of documents with official Shogunate approval? Or do you just want to vanish from your cell in the middle of the night? We won’t force you to do anything. You allowed this power to blossom within us, so think of this as using what you left in our care. You only need to tell us the method you prefer.”

“Bara.”

He repeated her name but more forcefully this time.

The usual mixture of bewitching and mischievous child vanished from her face and she instead had the look of a girl fearing rejection.

“It is true I gave you the skills you need to get through life. I gave you what you need to take on the world’s cruelties and use them to your own benefit, but that wasn’t so I could use you as tools down the line.”

“…”

“You’ll do anything for me? Do I really need to repeat myself, Bara? I’m imprisoned here because of what I did to save you four after you let someone trick you into doing their bidding.”

“But…”

“You said you’re not the only one in here, right? Then pass my message onto them.”

He had to be clear about this one point.

He had left it more up in the air in the past and that had led to problems.

It might sound coldhearted.

It might trample on the feelings she was offering him.

But he could not compromise on this.

No matter what.

“This is my life, so please stop trying to take control for your own benefit.”

The frostbite was not that bad, so feeling returned to his feet after they were warmed. Once he could walk on his own again, he returned to the general prison.

That critical old man greeted him.

“You really are a dumbass, aren’t you? You were granted a stay in that ‘hotel’, so you should’ve thrown a fit until they let you at least stay the night.”

The walls were made of cold, heavy stone and the metal bars increased the oppressive atmosphere further. Abashiri’s special prison had a square cloister design with a central atrium up to the third floor. The cells on the outside walls had small (but bar-covered) windows, but the inner cells did not even have that. It was said a lot of prisoners had their psyche destroyed by the oppressive isolation more than the biting cold.

The Tomb that Sugiyado had been thrown into did not exist on the officially-released layout of the prison.

He could not be certain since he had been blindfolded and earplugged, but he was pretty sure it was located even further in than the inner cells.

“Your cell is just the way you left it. If they thought you would die from that, the other prisoners would have rushed in to pilfer your stuff.”

“I didn’t bring anything much with me.”

“You moron, a struggle over a single wire can lead to a death here. Even though no one actually has the guts to try a serious jailbreak or to attack a guard.”

The old man in the standardized jumpsuit was pushing a mop along the floor, but he usually stayed in the medical building. He was part of the privileged class who were cut off from this miniature version of the criminal underworld and were actually given comfortable rooms and nutritious food. In exchange, they were supposedly isolated in a padded room and not allowed to use the exercise area or pool, but that did not seem to be the case with him. He freely moved between the prison and the medical building, getting the best of both worlds.

Simply put, he was a model prisoner.

He did not cause the guards any trouble and he did not influence the power balance among the prisoners. He was not just well behaved. He would have been chewed up and spat out if that were the case. People seemed to ignore him like the weeds on the side of the road, but he had actually discovered a safe zone where no one ever actually trod.

And despite being a model prisoner, he never received any visitors.

He had the same scent as Sugiyado.

He was hiding some kind of skill. Instead of lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike, it felt like hiding his skill was simply second nature to him. Sugiyado had no intention of asking about the man’s identity, but the man had the dampness of a shady area that never saw the light of the sun. And this was the professional kind of dampness that silently ruined the enemy army’s powder.

“What’s your plan?” asked the old man while using the mop to prop himself up.

“For what?”

“You aren’t going to antagonize the guards and get yourself thrown into the Tomb twice in one day again, are you? Like I said in the medical building, you have a good enough eye to easily curry the favor of the VIPs without drawing the attention of the fine gentlemen with back tattoos.”

“…”

“You wouldn’t have given up the comfort of the medical building if you weren’t planning to reach a compromise with this building’s rules, right? Then think about how you should behave. There are only two ways to survive in here: rely on the guards who love wielding power over the rest of us, or find a place for yourself in the marble pattern of underworld territories the prisoners have created. My guess is you’re innocent yourself, boy. Although you also don’t seem the type to abandon all your techniques for someone who has done something wrong.”

The old man was right.

To survive here, you had to learn the rules and make sure you never stepped out of line.

Sugiyado had failed to do that because he had no vision for his future.

He did not know what kind of life he wanted to live.

“You don’t need to bottle it up inside.” The old man sounded carefree. “Save that restraint and patience for when you’re on a job. Now that you’re behind bars, you’ve been freed from that burden. You’re free here, so you don’t have to stubbornly carry all of that baggage with you.”

“…”

“Enjoy your sentence. You might have fallen into the filth at the depths of the earth, but it’s your life to live.”

The general cells were shared by two to four prisoners each. The solitary confinement cells might sound more comfortable since you had it to yourself, but that kind of isolation for days on end was enough to break even the bodyguards who served criminal organizations. The size of the rooms was identical, but these cells were very different from a student apartment where manga and your phone were within arm’s reach.

Sugiyado was lying on the thin mattress sitting on the floor of a solitary confinement cell.

And then…

“Sensei.”

“…”

“I know you heard that. Answer me.”

He slowly sighed.

There did not appear to be any gaps at all between the bricks of the thick walls, but one of the blocks was pulled out from the other side.

“You too, Asagao? The four of you are the Shogunate’s trump cards, so what are you doing here?”

Would anyone have believed him if he said an 11-year-old girl had broken into his cell?

Abashiri was the Shogunate’s maximum security prison, so if she had worked out a viable jailbreak route and reported it to the Shogunate, she would have been immediately recruited to some important position. Yet if Sugiyado went to the guards and said there was a girl in his cell’s wall, they would assume he had completely lost it and finally send him to the medical building for good.

“At our level, we’re allowed some selfish actions. Although I feel like they had some greater purpose for sending us Elite Ninjas to this northern land. Moving us here as game pieces has put someone in check.”

“…”

“Sensei, if you keep ignoring me, I’ll have to take drastic measures. For example, I brought you some Happy Churn, but I might just eat it all myself while you can only helplessly watch on.”

That one shook his resolve pretty bad, but he was her instructor. He could not set a bad example for his student.

“Crunch, crunch. Hm, I should have brought a drink.”

“Wait, no, Asagao! Please stop! That sound…that smell…”

“These things are a real pain to eat. Your fingers get all sticky no matter where you touch them. Wipe, wipe. How are you supposed to eat them, Sensei?”

“Don’t just wipe off your fingers! Licking off that tasty powder is one of the best parts!!”

Most likely, the Shogunate had not sent Asagao and the others to the Hokkaido Area because they were needed there. Instead, they must have known those four would be going there anyway, so they decided to find a way to make it useful.

“Hey, Sensei,” said Asagao through the wall. “Don’t you want to hear about the new order in Edo?”

“It’s none of my concern. I’m just a prisoner.”

“Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.”

“Nhhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Here, you like licking off the powder, right? Well, it’s all over my fingers, so have at it. Nee hee hee. Don’t you want some of that Happy Churn flavor?”

The girl’s small hand poked out from the hole in the wall and tempted the ninja like a sea anemone.

It was time for Sugiyado Souha to be a man by biting his lip and resisting.

Asagao must not have understood just how psychologically painful this torture was, but he was starting to hallucinate Happy Churns floating around his cell.

“Well, I’m not going to force anything onto you like Bara and Ouka want to. You can do things your way and I’ll just come pay you a visit whenever I’m feeling lonely.”

“That isn’t how this works.”

“Hey, I’m showing restraint here. The others are being far less reasonable.” He saw her round eye wink through the dark hole in the wall. “More importantly, Sensei, you’ve found a pretty impressive friend in here, haven’t you? The way that old man carries himself is weird.”

“He’s probably from the same world as us. There are plenty of paths to being a ninja. Some are bandits or pirates given government approval, some are miners hired for their tunnel digging skills, some are swordsmen who were kicked out of their school for breaking the rules, some are firework makers who know how to handle explosives, and some are special forces specifically trained by the Inner Palace or the Shogunate. He’s probably one of the varieties we’re less familiar with.”

“What’s your guess?”

“Song.”

It was not clear what he meant from that word alone, but Asagao responded with the tone of someone trying to decide on a skirt color in the fitting room.

“Hmm, I know what you mean, but I don’t think that’s quite it. He seems more like me.”

11-year-old Asagao was not suited for direct combat and she was never meant to battle the armored samurai who had become absurd collections of weapons with mechanized armor irreversibly fused to their bodies. She had learned to make use of other skills instead: infiltration, disturbance tactics, morale reduction, forensics, and even cyber attacks. You could say she had mastered every form of information warfare.

That little monster whispered quietly from the hole in the bricks.

“Don’t let him affect you too much, Sensei. In some ways, a lonely old man inspires protective instincts even more so than a lost child or abandoned kitten. I use my position as a child as a weapon and he’s clearly butting in on my territory. We know he isn’t just an ordinary old man, so who knows what he’ll inject you with if you let your guard down. It won’t hurt to remain cautious at all times.”

“Asagao.”

“No, you’re the one that needs a lecture right now. Do not forget that the top of the Shogunate, for whatever reason, allowed us to visit Abashiri. That’s four Elite Ninjas. Not ordinary foot soldiers and not their armored samurai; the best of their ninjas who specialize in solving problems that cannot come to light. There must be something more going on here. Something serious enough to grant us our selfish request if it would place some of their strongest pieces on the board to keep an eye on things.”

“…”

“And the most important thing to remember here is that I, our expert in all things information warfare, have come all the way here yet I still haven’t discovered what that something is. We’re talking about expert level camouflage here, so isn’t it reasonable to keep an eye on every fellow ninja you’ve seen here, Sensei?”

Prisons were home to many different plans and interests.

Godfathers who ran a giant organization from behind bars, gold-egg-laying geese who had placed themselves behind bars for their own safety, ‘hotel workers’ who made sure they could work from the inside to create a comfortable place for any of their organization’s people who ended up behind bars – and who would make sure those people did not spill the beans about anything important – and more.

If those were like shining suns, then there were also plenty of planets revolving around them because they either wanted to help those suns escape from the prison or who wanted to kill them.

A prison was a clockwork device made from a complex arrangement of countless gears. Everything had a large or a small role in someone’s plans and anyone who failed to pick up on that when they arrived would be cast out of the giant device as a faulty part. Everything had a role because everything that did not was removed to trim the fat.

Prisons were meant to rehabilitate people so they could return to society, but the exact opposite tended to happen. Even an amateur pickpocket would become immersed in the rules of the criminal underworld after spending just a month there. Because there was no escape and they could not survive otherwise.

“I hear you got thrown in the Tomb again. That’s supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime sorta punishment, but you’ve made yourself into a damn regular.”

In the cafeteria, the model prisoner of an old man spoke to Sugiyado in obvious exasperation.

The food was hard bread and bean soup. It was only meant to provide the bare minimum of sustenance needed to stay alive. The bread was too hard to bite through unless it was soaked in the soup first.

Sugiyado ate his meal in silence, so the old man sighed across from him.

“The guards are actually starting to panic, you know? They’ve used the Tomb so often this month your absence on the paperwork is looking pretty noticeable. If they get hit with a surprise inspection from Central right now, a whole buncha illegal practices might come to light and they don’t want that.”

“See, I’m helping.”

“Good grief. You really are a ninja through and through, boy. This prison is a public institution managed by the Shogunate. Did your love of justice and public service get the better of you when you saw how corrupt the government workers here are?”

Sugiyado did not give a clear answer.

He simply let the bland bean soup soak into a piece of bread he tore off.

“You’re not doing a great job of keeping a low profile either, old man. Hanging around me is only going to cost you points.”

“Probably so, but to hell with it. No one ever comes to visit me, so I’m bored out of my mind. Life is nothing without a little excitement.”

“…”

“Sorry if you don’t like it, but every kid your age reminds me of my grandson. I thought I did a decent job of looking after him once my son and his wife disappeared, but that little bastard hasn’t come to see me even once after I was cuffed.”

A prison was a giant clockwork device made from a complex arrangement of countless gears, but that also meant driving a single wedge into a choice location could bring the entire thing to a halt. They had tried their best to remove any obstacles like that, but Sugiyado Souha was different. The risk he posed could not be measured based on how hard he was, so he could not be destroyed just by blindly applying force from the outside.

A wild rampage was not the only way to take action.

Intentionally taking an inferior position could sometimes work to express yourself in a way that shook an institution to the very foundation.

The old man seemed to understand that.

“But be careful. Even the scum they hire as guards have families. When they’re in a bind, they’ll all of a sudden remember what it means to be righteous. People like that will escalate things endlessly if it will protect something they care about and don’t forget that you are the one who is threatening that something. So be careful. If they panic, who knows how far they’ll go to cover up what they’ve done.”

“Sugiyado,” called a deep voice.

Sugiyado looked back from his chair and saw two large guards walking across the cafeteria toward him.

“#1090, Sugiyado Souha! We need to discuss your lifestyle. Come with us!!”

That was the least specific topic of discussion Sugiyado had ever heard. They could try to detain a Martian using that one. The old man quietly moved away from the boy while leaving some advice in his ear.

“What did I tell you? They’re here to silence you. Sending you to the comfortable medical building was meant to placate you. Since that failed, they’re going to try threats and violence. Tread very carefully.”

They tugged on his arm to force him up from the chair. They did not care in the slightest that he still had more than half his paltry meal left. Then they shoved on his back to get him moving toward the cafeteria’s exit.

A moment later, a loud explosion and shockwave shook the room.

Since one of the walls had crumbled, dust filled the cafeteria much like a cumulonimbus cloud. The shockwave slammed into Sugiyado’s back, so he was thrown to the floor along with the two guards.

(An explosion!?)

It had not been aimed at him.

It had come from behind. Someone, either from the outside or inside, had broken through the cafeteria wall. He could hear a lot of yelling and shouting over the loud ringing in his ears. Order had entirely collapsed. No one was following the rules set up by the jailed godfathers and the prisoners.

“Ow.”

He heard an almost childish voice from right next to him.

The guard had collapsed onto his side and was curled up on the floor.

There was also something wrong with his silhouette, especially at the arm.

“Ahhh, it hurts.”

“A table leg flew over and hit you, didn’t it? Let me see your coat and baton. I’ll use those for a makeshift splint, so don’t move. You won’t die of shock as long as you don’t move the broken bone around too much, so you can still survive this. This is all I can do for you.”

“No, wait. Don’t leave me behind. I’ll do anything…anything.”

Sugiyado did not have time for anything more.

He heard something whoosh through the air.

“Kh.”

The dust kept him from seeing anything at all, but he still moved. He swung his head to the side to dodge the glint of a blade and then pulled the plastic radio from the collapsed guard’s hip. He aimed the bottom of that at the assassin and slammed it into their hipbone, which was the most difficult spot to dodge.

“Gyah!?”

Bone and nerve pain were unique, so training was not enough to build up a resistance. The person hopped up like they had been hit by a stun gun and Sugiyado used that opening to sweep their feet out from under them, sending their back slamming into the hard floor. He doubted a pro would be acting alone, so he stole the weapon form the dazed masked assassin’s hand, instantly assessed its heft, reach, and balance, and then swung it horizontally. Another enemy stepped forward to help their fallen friend, so the blow caught them more on the side of the neck than the face, knocking over their entire body.

Once both had been taken out, Sugiyado looked down at the weapon he held.

It was neither a sword nor a gun.

(A collapsible shovel?)

“Sensei!”

He gave another horizontal swing of the shovel, but stopped partway through.

The next person to appear through the thick cloud of dust was a middle-school-aged girl with her long chestnut hair worn in twintails. She made no attempt to hide her cutting-edge ninja outfit or her vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun called Midnight Tempest.

“Ouka? Just to be sure, you aren’t here on a Shogunate mission, are you?”

“Well, um, no. I’m not.”

This was Abashiri’s special prison which boasted the Shogunate’s best security, but it turned out his students and some other group of ninjas had infiltrated the place.

“Understood. Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself. Your gun would leave signs of your presence too easily, so you stay put and-”

“No, that’s not my point. Sensei, uh, over there.”

She did not seem quite sure what to say, like a scolded child desperately trying to calm their parent’s anger.

Then Sugiyado noticed it too.

The initial explosion had occurred behind the boy while he was leaving the cafeteria and it had not been targeting him. The later attack on him must have been a chance encounter in order to eliminate the unexpected pro who happened to be in the combat area.

So.

Who had been the true target of these people who had gone as far as using explosives to force their way into the Shogunate’s max security special prison?

“Old man.”

Asagao had said he was not just an ordinary old man.

Sugiyado himself had thought the man was from a different branch of ninjas.

“Old man!!”

He parted the dust to search for the old man and found a figure collapsed on the floor along with the splintered table and chairs. The old man in a prison jumpsuit was lying face up and a well-forged piece of steel glittered where it was buried deep into his chest and gut.

“A cross shuriken? And it’s been given a rough-skinned surface.”

Just like how racing swimsuits eliminated resistance in the water, the texture of a projectile’s surface could greatly alter its speed and trajectory.

However…

“Ha…ha ha. Killed by a ninja weapon I created myself. Oh, the irony.”

The old man apparently lacked the strength to even hold a hand to his wound.

Ouka crouched down to inspect him and then looked back at Sugiyado with a complicated look on her face. She apparently had enough tact to not actually shake her head right in front of the dying old man.

“But that’s not so big a deal. The inventors of deadly tools for torture or execution are often killed by their own creations, so that I can bear. But it’s more than that.”

“…”

“Curse that brat. This explains why he hasn’t even sent me a letter. He must have gotten himself caught up in some kinda trouble. …I made this shuriken for my grandson, you see.”

Ouka gasped.

If she thought this meant he had been killed by his own blood relative, she still had some learning to do.

A ninja never left any evidence behind. Throwing a shuriken and leaving it was an absolute last resort much like scattering caltrops, so it was only done when you were losing. In this one-sided surprise attack using explosives, the attacker had held an overwhelming advantage, so it was hard to imagine they would rely on this kind of “last resort” from the get-go. There were ninjas like Hoozuki that favored shurikens, but he made sure she always kept track of how many she had launched and where she had launched them. That was of course so she could collect them later on. It was unthinkable to just leave one conspicuously stabbed into your primary target like this.

Which left only one possibility.

“Old man, do you have any idea who would have left this ‘business card’? That is, who would want to frame your grandson for killing you!? He’ll be in serious trouble at this rate!!”

“Don’t get involved.”

However.

The old man found the words even as his breathing grew shallow.

“Boy, your life is yours to live. Use your skill for yourself. Don’t worry. My grandson’s a ninja too. He only ran away because the boring work of an underworld craftsman wasn’t for him. He lives in this world of constant deception as much you or me, so no matter what might happen, this isn’t any of your business.”

“I owe you for all the help you gave me here. I can’t leave that debt unpaid.”

“…”

“Don’t you want to do something for your grandson? You clearly care about him enough to use your specialized skills to make a weapon for him even after he abandoned the family business, so tell me what I can do! Tell me!!”

“Sapporo. New Sapporo Domain.”

He could barely get the words out.

In the very end, this was all Sugiyado managed to get out of him.

“Take care of that kid.”

Those were his final words.

But his death was not met by silence.

Several more explosions occurred elsewhere and fires were blazing. The attackers were likely spreading the damage across the prison so it was harder to tell who they had been after. That meant this violence was entirely meaningless.

Sugiyado could hear the roar of flames consuming oxygen drawing closer.

First he saw black smoke, then the firefly-like embers, and finally heat and flames bursting in through the exit.

“Sensei!!”

All of this would be blamed on the old man’s grandson.

The tool so carefully crafted to protect that boy’s life would be used as evidence to frame him.

It was like spitting in the face of the already dead man.

“We need to get out of here. Stay here and you can’t save anyone!!”

“Ouka, I can’t do that. I was given a guilty verdict, so I will leave this information with you four. I’ll search out any connections I can find from within the prison. Yes, I can see if anyone was surreptitiously taken to an unnatural safe zone just before the explosions.”

“During a natural disaster, all the cells are unlocked and the prisoners are temporarily freed to keep them alive. So!!”

His student took drastic measures.

She spread her arms in front of him as if preparing to raise them in a cheer, but then she climbed on top of him.

He did not have time to feel the girly warmth and softness of her skin.

His spine felt funny at 5kg and exploded with pain at 10kg.

“Gah!!!???”

“Sorry, Sensei, but we’re going!!”

To make up for an old injury, he had bolts in his spine and springs to replace the ligaments in his legs, so he now felt excruciating pain and had trouble breathing whenever he was burdened with too great a weight.

While he convulsed on the floor like he had been hit in the back with a stun gun, the Elite Ninja kunoichi lifted him up over her shoulder and easily parted the black smoke to reach the exit.

A panicked scene opened up before their eyes, but Ouka used the veil of smoke to hide her conspicuous appearance and left the thick concrete building without anyone spotting her.

No.

She did more than that.

“Pant, pant.”

When the twintailed girl finally lowered her instructor in exhaustion, they were not even in the outdoor exercise area.

They were outside the tall wall surrounding the entire prison grounds.

“Ouka.”

“Every day since you were imprisoned, it’s felt wrong to me that someone like you is trapped in there.”

She wiped the sweat from her brow and gave him a mischievous smile.

Annoyingly enough, she had not planned this and had simply taken advantage of the situation. Anyone who did not know better might have suspected she caused the explosions herself.

She really was a ninja.

And Sugiyado Souha had no one to blame but himself since he had trained her to be like this.

“But now you’re a free man, Sensei. They have a hard enough time confirming identities at the scenes of ordinary fires and Abashiri holds a ridiculous number of people since it’s the country’s largest special prison. It’ll take the guards a while to notice you’re missing.”

“Is that so?”

“Asagao can make you a new ID, so you can go wherever you want.”

He let out a gentle sigh.

The time had come to switch his train of thought as a ninja.

“If I’m free, then I’m free to do whatever I want. Even if that means getting to the bottom of this incident and taking revenge on that old man’s behalf.”

“Um, uh.”

Ouka sounded hesitant. She must have only now realized that life in that prison had not been pure misery for Sugiyado. She had only made up her mind after the explosion, but she had still taken advantage of it. With four Elite Ninjas there, couldn’t they have detected the attack in advance? Couldn’t they have stopped it if they had not been so focused on their own desires? She was probably afraid he would get after her for that reason.

But she was wrong.

In the end, it was Sugiyado’s fault the old man had died. He had been by his side all that time and the old man had helped him out in so many ways. He had spoken with the man so often, so if he had only asked, he may have been able to learn more about the old man’s situation. Even if that meant using his ninja conversational and negotiation skills to tear down the man’s mental barriers. Then he could have been ready for the attack when it came.

But he had not wanted to apply such cold logic and quantification to someone he considered a friend. That was the only reason he had not done that.

In the end, it had all been Sugiyado Souha’s decision.

He had the skills necessary, but he had chosen not to use them.

“Old man.”

The old man had told him not to get involved.

It was Sugiyado who had convinced him to make that final request concerning his grandson, so he could not pretend he had not heard it.

So.

Sugiyado Souha shut his eyes and called up his memory of the old man’s corpse left behind at the scene of the fire. Specifically, he recalled the nametag on the man’s prison jumpsuit.

Murakami Shouzou.

That strongest of ninjas, who had surpassed even the rank of Elite Ninja, opened his eyes with renewed resolve.

“A Hidden One is on the case, so you can rest in peace.”

## Chapter 1

### 1: New Sapporo Domain

White snow was falling, but the sky above was blue and the sun was shining bright.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha pushed up his scarf a bit in the back seat of the off-road motorcycle called Countless Calamities. This slow-melting artificial snow was a type of environmental defensive policy. Its chill felt more like a mist shower than air conditioning when it hit his skin.

He wore a thin short-sleeved dress shirt over a black long-sleeved shirt plus baggy pants. And more to remain inconspicuous than to fight the cold, he wore a scarf around his neck and a soft down jacket.

Dressing heavily and carrying ample equipment was not always a plus for a ninja.

Especially in Sugiyado’s case since he had springs to replace the ligaments in his legs and bolts in his spine.

At 5kg, his back would feel funny. At 10kg, it would explode with pain.

That meant a single jacket could be a serious drain on his life. Carrying a lifeline or a first-aid kit would mean not carrying some other piece of equipment.

“The northernmost Wakkanai Domain has officially announced their intention to reinforce the Karafuto Route as a new Dejima. They hope to expand their role as a friendly economic contact point with the Cyrillic Empire and…”

“The Insightful Databank Thinktank has used their official social media account to indicate a problem with New Sapporo Domain’s power consumption, so Princess Karin, the Domain’s substitute ruler, has announced their intentions to spend more on renewable energy so that…”

“Hakodate Domain, the Hokkaido Area’s main contact point with Honshu, is concerned about a recent increase in petty crime by motorcycle travelers and they are considering increasing the lodging tax to drive down the number of tourists who…”

“Hoozuki.”

“Oh, sorry. If there’s a channel you want to watch, just say so, Sensei.”

Silver ponytail Hoozuki glanced into the back seat through the mirror while holding the off-road motorcycle’s handlebars and also lowering the volume of the 1seg TV app on the phone attached to the holder. Her ninja outfit was composed of a one-piece swimsuit, a number of synthetic belts, and wide-legged pants, so it looked a lot like a riding suit. The back was left wide open, so it was kind of embarrassing having to hold onto her from behind. Even though her entire body was covered by a thin, flesh-colored elastic material much like a figure skater.

“It would take less than an hour to get from one side of the Hokkaido Area to the other if we could only use their underground linear motor train.”

“That doesn’t do us any good when the entire train line was decommissioned in the name of defense. And don’t drive so fast, Hoozuki. We aren’t in that much of a hurry.”

The Hokkaido Area was currently divided into six domains.

The most urban of those was New Sapporo Domain. Unlike New Yokohama Domain where Sugiyado Souha had lived previously, it was surrounded by flat land in all directions and the primary roads were laid out on a grid by thorough urban planning. It had a population of 4.5 million. The central commerce and industry district covered a square of about 15km and farms too large to seem possible in Japan stretched out from there. Seeing it in person made it clear why this was the only place in the country to use airplanes to sow their crops’ seeds.

All of the Four Occupations could be found here: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants.

And even if they did get a lot of snow here, it was not the worst part of Japan in that regard, so it was not enough to bury a home. Thus, they were slower to invest in snow melting pipes and food supply shelters when compared to the Sea of Japan side of Honshu.

That was also why they could afford to use that unnatural artificial snow.

While not on the level of barbed wire or trenches, deep snow functioned as an obstacle to the feet of soldiers and the wheels of trucks. By intentionally creating areas of sludge, they could slow an enemy’s advance without pouring much effort into it themselves.

On the news, they often discussed meeting with other countries over a meal or establishing appeasement policies, but the truth was that outside forces were constantly trying to get at this locked-down country’s cutting-edge technology.

Due to the presence of the Karafuto Route and the Nakhodka Route, New Sapporo Domain functioned as a fortress defending Honshu from an invasion by the Empire. It was thought the battle would be fought in the Hokkaido Area since it was one of the archipelago’s vastest areas of land, so a lot of large weapons had been deployed outside the capital, including the armored samurai who were an inseparable fusion of human and machine.

The underground linear motor train mentioned before had been decommissioned because it was thought a network of tunnels connecting different points on the island would defeat the purpose of a defensive line on the surface. The tunnels had been reported filled with concrete.

Conflict with the Empire that ruled the Cyrillic region of the world was in a lull, but there was still a possibility of clashing with Eastern Europe just like they were at odds with Western Europe, North America, and South America. Two massive “metal bridges” extended diagonally up from the center of the giant farm, pointing outwards, in order to protect the Chitose Defense Airport which functioned as an airbase and a civilian airport. Needless to say, those “bridges” were in fact strategic antiaircraft lasers that were thought capable of intercepting ballistic missiles.

Some would find them reassuring, others would lament the fact that they were necessary to sleep at night.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm, hmm.”

The girl with her long silver hair in a ponytail hummed to herself while climbing down from the off-road motorcycle she had parked on the curb. One’s skintight ninja outfit was generally meant to be hidden, but hers looked so much like a riding suit that she blended in without wearing much of anything over it.

The down jacket boy gave her a curious look as he set foot on the ground behind her.

“What has you in such a good mood, Hoozuki?”

“Nothing really. It’s just been too long since we’ve done this. …You could call this a secret date we can’t afford to let anyone find out about, couldn’t you? That’s my idea of a fun time. It’s what the kunoichi life is all about!”

“?”

“Hm, hm, hmm☆”

At any rate, they had made it into Sapporo.

Sugiyado was playing this by ear. He had to solve whatever problems Murakami Shouzou had been facing and save the grandson that old man had been so worried about as he died.

Sugiyado patted his down jacket to confirm the presence of the special ninja tools he had hidden in the sleeves and back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Those tools were air-pressure kunais that used nitrogen gas and the same concept as the tools that forced open crushed car doors. When the blade was opened up like a U-shaped tuning fork, they could even pry open a tank’s hatch. His equipment had been provided by his students.

“Sensei.”

Ouka and Asagao must have used a domestic flight because they had arrived earlier and were waving to the two new arrivals. Ouka was of course not wearing her cutting-edge ninja outfit in this crowd.

She was smiling over at him with chestnut twintails, a fluffy sweater, and a miniskirt (which she considered to be her killer outfit!!).

“We have prepared some hideouts and a full set of equipment in each. We set up four bases in total, so use whichever one is most convenient at any given time.”

“Four,” groaned Sugiyado, eliciting a laugh from Asagao, the bob cut girl in a white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt. (She apparently did not care that she was wearing her ninja outfit in public.)

“Don’t worry about which one you choose, Sensei. But if you never use one of the bases, the girl who set it up might just go cry in secret.”

That was not what he wanted to hear.

He recalled that standard practice with kunoichis was to always meet with them one-on-one when receiving a report on their spying duties. Because the possibility of jealousy-fueled conflict between the kunoichis was too high otherwise.

Ouka and Asagao began whispering to each other.

“(This is what I call paradise. A teacher and his student on a secret date in a romantic northern city? How can I not get excited about that? I hope we end up working together like this forever!)”

“(I know, Ouka. And his obligations here are entirely tied to that old man from the prison. Once he’s done with that, we’re free to start on our new harem life. With four of the Shogunate’s strongest kunoichis working at it, we’re bound to trap him in a sea of sex appeal this time.)”

He called out to those two to cut that extremely dangerous conversation short.

“Let’s review.”

He had gone to the effort of dismounting Hoozuki’s motorcycle. They already knew their destination, but it was important to share all basic information first. Think of it like syncing everyone’s clocks before a mission. It could not hurt to repeat yourself.

“Murakami Shouzou was probably a ninja who worked as a weapon craftsman within New Sapporo Domain. And someone wanted to eliminate him badly enough to attack Abashiri, the most secure prison in the country. They even used his own grandson’s shuriken to frame that relative for the crime.”

“We still haven’t managed to work out the identity of the ninjas you defeated, Sensei.” Ouka lightly waved her phone with a troubled look on her face. She must have had some kind of video saved on there. “They probably aren’t officially registered like we are. Calling them non-primary personnel sounds nice and all, but it looks more like local thugs were given government equipment and made to fight. That couldn’t have been meant to last long, so they were effectively made to be disposable.”

“Tch. And I bet the recruited soldiers had their fear stripped from them by showering them with praise about being the chosen few or the ultra elite or something,” spat out the black bob cut girl in a white military uniform.

That said, Abashiri was a max security special prison.

The average thug off the street could not break in without considerable help. Someone else must have led them in the attack. Everyone else had really just been meant as a smokescreen in case of a counterattack. Human lives had been spent like the chaff or flares used to divert missiles.

“What school?” asked Sugiyado.

“The Hole.”

Sugiyado had made the same judgment based on the collapsible shovel held by one of the assassins who attacked the old man.

Ouka gave a blunt response.

“Based on their equipment and muscle tone, they appear to be a school derived from miners. They excel at constructing infiltration routes by digging tunnels, using special ninja tools based off of shovels and pickaxes, and extreme close-quarters combat in closed and dark locations. They are probably also explosives specialists.”

That might sound reasonable enough when hearing it all rattled off at once like that, but “closed spaces” and “explosives” did not go together. Normally, combining the two would also kill the user with the blast, shockwave, and rapid pressure change. Forcibly making it work suggested these people preferred fairly acrobatic strategies.

They must have dug a tunnel to secretly enter the Abashiri special prison. That too was not something you could accomplish simply by handing the necessary tools to some thugs.

So he knew what they had to do next.

“We need to figure out who was leading them,” he said. “They must be near the top of the Shogunate hierarchy. They have to be at least on the level of a High Ninja, so they should be registered as such.”

Ninjas were intelligence agents and spies for the Shogunate, so they were public servants. Any ninja living in this city would have their information on the classified server of the castle at the center of New Sapporo Domain.

But…

“I couldn’t find anything. And I doubt any further searching will do much better. Ta ha ha.”

“…”

Ouka let out some bitter laughter, but she did continue.

Success and failure were simply things that had happened. Hesitating to report something or trying to lie about it to save face would break the thread of trust binding them.

“Instead of the data we want not existing on the classified server, it was more like the server we were accessing wasn’t really the one at the center of New Sapporo Castle.”

Asagao, their computer whiz, began hopping up and down as she provided further information.

“From what I could see through the screen, it did look just like New Sapporo Castle’s official databank, but it probably wasn’t. All the communication lines heading toward the center of the castle were diverted to the side along the way. The server sends and receives 10s of millions of requests every single day, but I doubt a single person is actually accessing the real one.”

In other words…

Silver ponytail Hoozuki stated their conclusion in an exasperated sort of way.

“The castle at the center of New Sapporo Domain has either been entirely isolated or occupied and it may have already been destroyed on the inside. And in a way that leaves no one the wiser in an age when countless cameras are constantly providing content for online videos and social media articles. This is a highly unusual situation.”

“Bara is off using her own methods to pursue the identity of whoever they had leading that attack, but the more sources we have, the better. And I’m also curious who our enemy is and what’s going on inside that castle.”

Sugiyado and the girls would normally have viewed these unknown ninjas as the force working to protect New Sapporo Domain. To reiterate, ninjas were a special sort of public servant. To claim that title, they had to be serving someone in that region. But that was also why they would not have needed to create a special route in if they were planning an armed uprising.

They would only have to turn 180 degrees around and aim their blade or gun toward the person they were meant to protect.

“Now, then.”

They had reviewed the basic information.

They all had an accurate understanding of it all. There were no discrepancies there.

Sugiyado Souha, the modern ninja who hid his silhouette with a down jacket and his lower face with a scarf, came to a stop and let out a gentle breath while looking up at a towering building.

“Let’s go see for ourselves what’s going on inside the actual castle.”

### 2: The Princess’s Castle

New Sapporo Domain was divided into a grid of districts like a Go board and one public facility took up four full blocks.

That facility was New Sapporo Castle.

“(Wow, check this out, Ouka. That’s the famous date spot they mention in all the guidebooks and tourism sites!)”

“(I know. They say any couple that has their first date there is guaranteed a long life of happiness together!)”

Asagao and Ouka were doing a poor job of hiding their excitement, but Sugiyado decided not to say anything since it made them look more like ordinary tourists.

They were on the walking path surrounding the castle outside its moat.

Everything in New Sapporo Domain was divided into those blocky districts, but this impregnable castle alone formed a perfect circle surrounded by a circular moat. The castle’s stone walls and tower had a Japanese design, but it also had some stone barracks extending flatly out from it, giving it a mixed Japanese and Western look.

The castle was located in the middle of a populous metropolis, yet four artillery emplacements had been built on the inside of the moat to aim outwards. All four were equipped with a large-caliber swiveling railgun.

The only ways to access the castle were the one bridge across the moat and the three piers. All four of those access points had a cannon keeping an eye on things.

With a population of 4.5 million, New Sapporo Domain was the largest metropolis of the Hokkaido Area, but it was also a giant military base and constant battlefield due to the over 25 years since it declared a quasi-war with the Cyrillic Empire and other nations. It was hard to imagine when seeing the colorful lights and the happy couples, but the slow-melting artificial snow that would continue accumulating even at average temperatures was a type of environmental defense policy. If a suspicious person or vehicle were approaching, the domain’s ruler would fire those cannons without even considering what would happen to the connecting bridge or the city on the other side of the moat. Sugiyado glanced over at the water past the railing.

“A moat, huh?”

“Normally, we could pay them an official visit as Elite Ninjas or, if they weren’t willing to receive us, use fake IDs to disguise ourselves as tourists or government officials.”

That sighing response to their teacher’s comment came from 11-year-old Asagao.

White snow was still falling around them, but it was all artificial snow meant to construct an environmental barrier against an attack. The actual temperature was warm enough for short sleeves and the moat was at no risk of freezing into a giant skating rink.

They slowly walked around the moat and passed by some other groups of cheerful tourists. While remaining cautious of those tourists’ phone cameras, of course.

“Since we don’t know what’s going on inside, we can’t know what changes have been made to their security,” said Hoozuki to keep the conversation going. “Crossing the moat on the bridge or by boat would be too risky. If we’re found out, we’d be torn to pieces by a 900mm rapid-fire railgun, Sensei.”

“The railguns are how you really know you’re in the Hokkaido Area. On Honshu, they use ship’s guns. They would never use stationary weapons in a big city.”

“Bara wasn’t happy about this. Her Serpent Monster uses solenoid coils that she simplified for portability, so they count as technologically-inferior coilguns.”

As a gadget lover herself, the silver ponytail girl must have understood the feeling she was describing.

At any rate, they had to get across that moat.

A moat was an ancient and very basic defense, but that was also why it was so effective. Physically cutting off all routes in in all 360 degrees made it very difficult to sneak in.

Extremely small Asagao gave a cruel laugh in her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt.

“Keh keh keh. How about we put on some mizugumo to glide right on over? Or we could dive underwater with a bamboo tube in our mouths to swim over on our backs like otters.”

“That moat is bound to be filled with a liquid sensor using electrolytes. Simply put, if you so much as stick your fingertip in the water, they can sense something is amiss due to the change in electric potential. The bottom of the moat has to be covered in a ton of electrodes. The turtles and koi that live in the water will be ignored, but anything deemed to be hostile will get zapped by 5 million volts. And that’s 5 million volts while in the water.”

Even the famously deadly electric eel only provided a voltage of around 600 volts. However, the three students did not look at all surprised to hear their instructor’s lecture. This moat was used to protect a castle, so of course it would have defenses like that.

Ouka asked a question with a tone that suggested she was testing the older boy.

“So we can’t use the bridge, we can’t use a boat, and we can’t use the water. How are we supposed to get across, Sensei?”

The instructor did not hesitate to answer.

There was only one real answer.

“We walk across.”

### 3: The Moat

A low rumbling passed by overhead.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha looked up to see a thick ceiling of reinforced concrete. But he was not indoors.

The deadly moat was located about 20m below him.

In other words, he was below the one bridge across the moat.

Whether it was a large building, warehouse, or bridge, any structure that needed to support a large space with minimal materials would use trusses, rigid frames, honeycombs, and jungle gym structures made out of steel beams. A close-to-home example could be found by looking up at the ceiling of a gym.

Sugiyado did not care how many checkpoints and security cameras they had on the top of the bridge. He only had to plant his feet on the jungle gym structure laid out below the bridge and make his way to the impregnable castle that way. If no one saw him, he could not be found. That was the foundation of ninja movement.

At this point, there was no need for disguises or camouflage.

Hoozuki had already been wearing her ninja outfit as a riding suit, but Ouka had changed into her cutting-edge ninja outfit as well. It looked like a sleeveless kimono with a sideless skirt. It provided excellent defense against bullets, it strengthened her athletic abilities, and it showed off her soft body in a provocative way that would create an opening in those who saw it. Her outfit was a deadly system that used her as a component.

Asagao had not changed either. She was still wearing her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt, but that was not meant for use in direct combat.

Hoozuki followed behind Sugiyado and spoke in an excited way with her silver ponytail falling on her seemingly bare back. It took a close inspection to notice that was a flesh-colored elastic material and not her bare skin.

“Sensei, I notice you aren’t leaping from beam to beam or anything like that. You just find these really clever routes that go against everything the designer expected.”

“Shh.”

He had them all come to a stop just before a castle patrol boat produced white waves in the water directly below. It had a 12.7mm Gatling gun and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher attached to its front armor. If that spotted them, not much would be left of them. Their bulletproof outfits would not do much against weapons of that size. And the boat would have a drive recorder installed, so it would not overlook them just because the pilot happened to be inattentive.

However.

“Incredible,” said extremely small Asagao in an exasperated way. “We just slipped right past its optimized anti-personnel auto-search.”

“We have the camera angles to thank for that. They’re only focused on the water’s surface and under the water.” Sugiyado sighed while leaning against one of the bridge’s beams. “They could have tens of thousands of cameras installed, but it was still humans who installed them and those humans will only point those cameras in the directions they expect a threat to arrive from. After all, installing and maintaining the cameras takes time and money, so they stop after covering ‘every’ route in. If it turns out there was a route they didn’t consider, well, that just makes avoiding the cameras a walk in the park.”

“The moat guards appear to be ordinary bodyguards.”

“Ouka, keep in mind that tourists cross the bridge to visit the castle,” said Hoozuki. “I doubt we’ll see anything out of the ordinary in the areas open to the public.”

Sugiyado listened to them while toying with the scarf over his mouth.

“If the ordinary workers are being manipulated without their knowledge, this likely goes all the way to the top of the command structure. I wonder what’s going on in the black box of the castle tower.”

There were cameras below the bridge, but those were all meant to check the water level during periods of heavy rain and they were not very thorough. By paying careful attention to where they stood on the complex jungle gym, they could easily slip behind the cameras.

When using an elevated route, it was always crucial to keep in mind where your shadow would be cast on the ground, but that was not an issue here since the bridge itself cast a giant shadow that covered up their own.

Ouka moved right up next to him and whispered to him.

She sounded like she was enjoying herself.

“I can see the other side of the moat below us, Sensei. We’re as good as inside the castle now.”

Once past the moat and on the castle grounds, they no longer had to fear the railguns that were fixed in place and could only swivel so far. After reaching the end of the complex arrangement of metal beams below the bridge, Sugiyado finally set his feet on solid ground again and spoke through his scarf.

“We’ve reached the southern railgun emplacement.”

“That’s equivalent to the sannomaru in a traditional castle, right?”

Arriving on the castle grounds was not the end of their journey. The grounds were divided up by several castle walls, they would find labyrinthine paths inside those walls, guards could throw stones or launch arrows at them from atop the castle walls, and armored samurai would be waiting to open fire on them in the open areas of the ninomaru and the honmaru. Attempting to navigate the labyrinth the castle designers had put in place was not a winning strategy.

Sugiyado sighed in his unzipped down jacket.

“The New Sapporo Domain has to constantly provide its four railgun emplacements with a massive amount of power and metal shells and I doubt they do that in a way that’s visible from the outside. There must be unofficial hidden passageways connecting the central castle to the four railgun emplacements.”

“And we can use that?” asked Ouka.

The boy nodded.

“We can arrive directly below the central castle. From there, we only have to climb up toward the surface.”

### 4: The Kunoichi Back Home

Now, what was Hanasawa Bara doing during all this?

“Hm, hm, hmm.”

The splashing of warm water echoed through the bath.

It was an indoor bath, but it was a natural hot spring. Bara usually preferred to pour in some Western aroma oil for a more relaxing experience, but a hot spring was not bad every now and then. The cypress bathtub gave the cloudy bathwater a unique and indescribable aroma.

But she could not relax in here forever.

A timer emitted a crude electronic tone.

“Hm? I suppose it is about time.”

The cloudy bathwater parted and she walked to the dressing room in the nude.

It was easy to assume she did everything in the most luxurious way possible, but she actually preferred a standard towel fabric to a fancy silk one. That texture was one of the few joys she had encountered after the fall of her family . It may have been similar to Sugiyado Souha’s love of Happy Churn.

The sexy girl gently grabbed a towel and dried off in front of a large mirror that reflected her full body. She always used two towels to dry off. The first she used on her face, her large chest, and her hips. Then she grabbed a new towel to dry off her arms, legs, and back.

She did it all in front of the mirror for much the same reason as a pro dancer.

The way she moved her body and shifted her weight had a large influence on her sex appeal. She liked to practice various actions and judge herself on them on a daily basis so she was always cognizant of how she looked doing different things.

After thoroughly drying herself off, she donned a special flesh-colored material that clung to her skin, much like the skintight material that figure skaters wore to stay warm. It was a cutting-edge piece of equipment that used a spider web structure to defend against bullets and blades and that used a combination of electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders and chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel. She put on ordinary underwear over that. There was actually no real reason she had to wear that, but humans were easily influenced by their imagination. Obvious underwear worked better at distracting the enemy than something that blended in with her flesh.

A normal kunoichi would normally finish it off by putting on the outer portion of her ninja outfit, but Bara was not your normal kunoichi. She needed another step in between.

She had something to attach to her lower back.

A mass of synthetic fabric larger than a pouch and smaller than a backpack more or less sat atop her large butt. Needless to say, that was the battery pack for the Serpent Monster coilguns hidden in her hair. Over that, she put on an oiran-style kimono that left her shoulders bare. Leaving the front of the kimono open helped hide the fact that the kimono and the knot of its sash were being used to hide the lump on her lower back. Finally, she stuck her phone into her cleavage. For a ninja, information was more important a weapon than blades or bullets.

Her hair was still a little damp and she did not have time to use a hairdryer, but it was not enough for her lovely ringlet curls to be squashed flat.

Her red hair doubled as the barrels for her coilguns. She had a wire-like framework installed through her hair to provide the optimal distribution for the solenoid coils.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

She hummed as she left the dressing room. She sniffed at her kimono and hair to enjoy the lingering scent of the hot spring. Her bare feet slapped against the floor as she walked through a large indoor space with (her ultra-thin ninja outfit making it look like) her skin was flushed pink even along the line of her nape. She made her way to a room detached from the main building. It was a metal box larger than a one-room apartment.

“How are you feeling?”

She opened the metal double doors and asked a mocking question.

The space was shaped like a long rectangle and a closer examination would have shown it was a large cargo container. There was also someone imprisoned within, but no one could tell that from the outside.

A professional would not be so terrified of leaving behind any hairs or fingerprints that they used a powerful stain remover to get rid of all bloodstains on the walls and floor after every single job. Once their objective was complete, they would crush the entire container and toss it in a blast furnace to eliminate all the evidence. It was simple, easy, and thorough. A ninja’s tools of the trade had to be 100% reliable.

A single chair sat in that space surrounded by metal walls, but it was not for Bara.

The chair was bolted directly to the floor and it was equipped with a few belts that were strapping a man to the chair like he was just another component of the chair.

The man’s head had slumped to the side.

Bara roughly grabbed his hair and shook his head side to side, but he did not react in any way. Much like a houseplant someone had forgotten to water.

Again, there was no chair in here for Bara.

If she only needed to kill some time, she could do so outside the container.

She was not the type to spend much time on this sort of thing and she did not act any more cruelly than necessary. All she did was mechanically extract all of the information they needed. No more and no less. Although that made her feared for a different reason.

She let go of the man’s filthy hair, circled to the front of the chair, bent her knees, and shined a penlight into his eyes. His breathing was normal, but his eyes did not dilate like they were supposed to. That kind of physiological reaction could not be suppressed even with self-hypnosis.

This was the polar opposite of the pleasant towel texture.

The man had ended up like this because of the perfectly ordinary white cloth tape attached to his neck and chest.

(This itch tape is based on the hairy caterpillars that gather on rose hedges, but it worked even better than I expected. But it affects different people so wildly differently that you need to run an “allergy test” first. Expose them to it for too long and it might destroy their psyche.)

Since this topic was so risky, Sugiyado had not taught it through online video lessons like he had with everything else. Sleep deprivation, overwork, weights, ice, smoke, needles, blunt impacts, joint pressure, water buckets, electricity, drugs, and more. Bara had experienced and overcome a wide variety of torture methods at the hands of her instructor in the name “anti-torture training”, but all she had learned was that humans were not built to endure these specialized techniques – a simple fact that your average kid off the street already knew. With unlimited time to work with, anyone would reveal everything they knew sooner or later, or they would die before doing so. According to her instructor, Bara’s face had been a mess of tears and snot while she trembled and begged for her life despite knowing it was only training. Why did she only know this secondhand when it was about her? Because during all the trembling and convulsing, she had passed out more times than she remembered and she could not seem to coherently piece together what fragmentary memories still remained with her. …She thought her face would burst into flames from embarrassment when she thought about the fact that he must have cleaned her up after she made such a mess of herself in that closed room.

Thus, torture countermeasures were less about whether you could endure what was being done to you and more about how you could get the torturer to stop. Taking control of whoever was in charge was the top priority. You could make a plea to their emotions to get them to break with their side, you could set a fire or cause a power outage to let your companions know where you were, you could amplify the guilt so the torturer could not maintain their mental stability, or you could intentionally let yourself be badly wounded to destabilize your vitals. There were countless methods.

So.

Bloodless torture methods were a lot safer and more beneficial for the people hoping to get information out of someone. Even professional soldiers could come down with PTSD, so capturing someone and unilaterally harming them was not necessarily “safe”. But if things were managed in a digital, numerical, and emotionless way, you did not have to worry about being shaken yourself. Of course, Bara was the type to be shaken here if this man claimed to have a sick sister or a is girlfriend who was taken hostage.

She crossed her arms and lifted up her large chest while asking a question much like an overbearing doctor.

This was one of the people who attacked the Abashiri special prison.

“I have a question. What is your name?”

“Sarutobi Ryugo.”

“What is your real name?”

“Tanaka Haruo.”

Just like when you did not get the answer you wanted from a search engine or AI speaker, she repeated her question slower and more clearly and got the information she was after as easily as pulling it from a drawer.

This was all ninjas were.

The exciting legends and genealogies of famous ninja families were all camouflage meant to hide the truth. There was no actual ninja family of Sarutobi. The word “ninja” was widely known, but no one knew what they really were or what they really did and no one tried to dig too deeply into those questions. The general public image of ninjas derived from entertainment was all a bluff that did not come close to showing what real ninjas were like and existed to give real ninjas an easier time of doing their jobs. There were ninjas who specialized in infiltrating acting troupes and film studios to influence how ninjas were portrayed. It was an official duty of theirs, but one they had to keep hidden.

Hanasawa Bara’s real name was not Hanasawa Bara.

She had abandoned her old name with the fall of her family.

“I would like to know about your organization. Who are they?”

“Mountain.”

“More specifically.”

“The Nobushi.”

She got an answer, but she still clicked her tongue. The time lag before he answered had been off. Despite the many stimulations tormenting him, there should have been some hesitation.

(Is this a detour? Am I being directed into an intentional labyrinth?)

“Again, who do you belong to?”

“Sea.”

“I said to be specific.”

“The Pirate Gunners.”

As expected, he gave a different answer this time. And she doubted either of them was accurate. He had been given a few “insurance” stories that were false but would be convincing enough to satisfy the questioner enough that they stopped the torment.

This man was a disposable pawn recruited on site.

Getting any useful information out of him had been unlikely from the beginning, but she had not expected it to be this hopeless.

(On the other hand.)

She looked away from the man’s face and toward the phone she pulled from her cleavage. It was gathering a variety of data – brainwaves, heartrate, perspiration, body temperature, eyeball movement, facial muscles, etc. – but all of it said this man felt confident . Whatever he had been told in advance, once he was captured by the enemy and separated from his organization, he should have been filled with distrust and beginning to wonder if he should really continue to obey them.

(I doubt this is just him being a particularly tough guy. Someone must have filled him with this abnormal confidence. But how could they do it so well so quickly and who would specialize in that method?)

Bara sensed someone else’s control at work here. Would an amateur taken in for a single job really trust the parent organization so strongly? She might find a hint to the enemy’s identity there.

### 5: A Brain at 15 Below

Japanese castles were all about height.

A mound of dirt was built up and stone walls were built around that to create the foundation, barracks and an armory were built atop that, and the very top was built into a castle tower that would provide the solid defense the castle’s owner needed during wartime. Tall castles acted as a status symbol, but it was all based on the exceedingly simple logic that blades and bows had a harder time attacking you when you were high up in a tower.

On the other hand, Western castles were all about width.

Height was only needed for soldiers to launch arrows and throw rocks from atop the walls and for the towers that were used as lookout posts and holding cells. The castle’s owner would be seated behind several castle walls in the main tower’s hall facing the garden, but that was not necessarily the tallest point of the castle.

Some said this was due to the earlier inclusion of cannons in Western warfare, meaning the castle had to be surrounded by a fortress loaded up with cannons. Others said it was due to the greater available land in the West giving them more space on which to build their castles.

“(Okay, we’re about at the point where there’s no getting out of this if we’re caught! Minor thrills and tension are the perfect spice for a dangerous love!! Ahh, if only I could let Sensei feel the pounding of my heart right now!!)”

“(Ouka isn’t going to intentionally get us caught for a thrill, is she?)”

Ouka and Hoozuki’s comments were best ignored.

New Sapporo Castle had used some Western castle design, but its overall scale was very Japanese. The additional facilities like the barracks and food storage were spread out to the sides in a very Western way, but the main central castle itself was built upwards in the Japanese way. The current isolationist policies may have placed some restrictions on the castle designs.

“No point in just staring up at it,” said Sugiyado Souha while hiding his mouth below his scarf which included some special anti-facial-recognition designs.

To reiterate, the 900mm rapid fire-railguns required a massive amount of power and they could not allow that line to be cut off, so they would not use open power lines.

If they could find the entrance leading underground, they would have a direct route to the central castle.

“Sensei, where should we go first?”

“The server room.” He did not even need to think about it. “I’m curious about the tower at the top, but we need to start by checking the data on that classified server we can’t access from the outside. If the enemy is keeping us from it, there must be something there they don’t want us to see.”

No one asked how they would find that without a map of the place. Large computers like that needed to be kept cool to avoid overheating. Not many locations in a building could bear the weight of the computers and the cooling equipment while also providing enough power to run it all. Just like a library, they would avoid placing it on a higher floor.

That meant it might be inside the stone walls.

They had defeated a few of the attackers at Abashiri, but those had only been disposable pawns recruited on site and were unlikely to provide much information. The “real ninjas” that had led them were apparently found in the New Sapporo Domain and the classified server used by government workers was redirecting all requests so not even Elite Ninjas like Ouka could get in.

Who had killed that old man?

The castle’s server room would be the best way to find the answer. Even if the hardware had been destroyed, there had to still be some kind of hint left there.

They had left that conspicuous cross shuriken at the scene in an attempt to frame the old man’s grandson. In the same way, different ninja schools had different ways to overcoming the same problems.

“…”

Sugiyado gently stuck the tip of his air-pressure kunai out through the metal grating to use it like a mirror and check around outside. Only then did he gently push up the cover located above his head.

That was enough for him to feel the bomb he carried in his spine.

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

Even now, he could feel the gentle touch of the grim reaper’s invisible fingers on his back.

He found himself in a large, windowless room.

It was located within a stone wall, so the lack of windows was no surprise.

Computers the size of industrial refrigerators were lined up across the room like a library’s bookcases or an apartment complex’s buildings.

Ouka released a white breath from her small mouth and then spoke to him.

“None of it looks like it was destroyed, Sensei.”

“The chips or data inside might be a different story.”

Asagao’s short-skirt military uniform must not have been warm enough for this chilly room because a shiver ran through her body and she pressed against Sugiyado’s hip for warmth. Sugiyado, who had a down jacket for warmth, toyed with the scarf covering his mouth as he decided on a plan of action.

“We’ll have to start with this. If it has data on the ninjas, then we have what we wanted. If it doesn’t, we can guess at their identity based on how it was erased. But be on the lookout for decoy data. They’ve already planted false evidence once.”

That said, deception was a standard ninja tool, so there was no point in discussing whether it was right or wrong. Although anyone who broke a taboo would have to be prepared to accept their punishment if they were caught.

It was unknown how the outside requests were being redirected to a fake server, but that method would not work if they were directly accessing the hardware from within the castle. He checked the syncing device that connected the multiple computers and then he checked for a connection port. He hooked his phone up to that with a cable.

“Found it.”

“What does it say, Sensei?”

Asagao stood on her tippy-toes to look at the small screen and he tilted his phone so she could see.

“The Hole.”

“So we were right,” said Ouka with the sound of someone who had found confirmation of something unpleasant.

Modern ninjas were not divided into schools based on actual families like Iga or Koga. The schools had names like Harlot, Bandit, Assassin, Informer, etc. They were all people who had been left with no choice but to become ninjas to make a living for themselves or to fight. Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, Asagao, and even Sugiyado Souha were no exception. If you wanted a respected family name you could be proud of, you were better off becoming a samurai.

The Hole was shorthand for the type of ninja that had started out as miners and other expert hole-diggers. They all had their own unique history, though. With some, their ancestor had lent their abilities to a daimyo or other important figure. With others, they had caused some sort of scandal and needed to go into hiding.

“Specifically, the Stonewalls. While they did work with dirt, their main job was constructing castles. But instead of the carpenters who work on the actual building, they would handle the preliminary phase that involved digging a moat, filling it with water, and building the stone walls needed for the foundation.”

“What weapons do you expect them to use?” asked Hoozuki.

“Probably something you would use to dig a tunnel,” he replied. “So mostly construction tools like pickaxes, shovels, and hammers. For projectiles, they might throw stones. And as a hidden surprise, we should expect some explosives. That shouldn’t work in a closed environment, but the technique to safely set off explosives inside a tunnel would give them even more precise control of explosions than a fireworks maker.”

Instead of modifying weapons like swords or spears into “a weapon customized from a weapon”, they would have started with cooking tools and the tools of their trade. After all, ninjas were not samurai. Their status was officially protected by the government now, but they had been unofficial saboteurs back in the day. They would have grabbed a kitchen knife, a saw, or whatever else was handy and customized it for easier use. Ninja tools like the kaginawa and kusarigama might look pretty out there by people who did not understand where they came from, but most of them actually had their origin in everyday items.

For example, the shuriken is the best known ninja tool, but before the standard stick shuriken and cross shuriken had been developed, ninjas had started with any number of other objects: kanzashi, tatami needles, star decorations, square clasps, gears, long nails, scissors, chisels, sword guards, etc. And since the original kunoichis had been sex workers, they would not be the ones wielding carpentry tools like nails or chisels. Shurikens were a last resort and leaving them behind would provide evidence that might just reveal what kind of ninja you were. It was possible to build a profile of an enemy and work out their identity based on the ninja tools they used.

The enemy here were hole-digging experts. Their techniques for infiltration, sabotage, disruption, and all other tasks would all start from there.

“Then they would probably be the perfect people to bring down a castle, Sensei,” said Ouka with a troubled look. “They can dig a tunnel into the castle grounds, pull out the foundation to bring down the castle walls, and even guide a bunch of polluted water into the moat for a biological attack. All they have to do is abuse the techniques they already have.”

Asagao asked a question as a follow-on to the twintail girl’s comment.

“But, Sensei, they were stationed here to protect the castle, weren’t they? They haven’t built up a bunch of labyrinthine defenses, so what actually happened here in the castle?”

“This isn’t limited to New Sapporo Castle. The Stonewalls are vulnerability advisors. They take a look at castles and fortresses from a tunnel-digging perspective and play the enemy in some training to give advice on how to improve the place’s defenses. You could call them inspectors that find their allies’ vulnerabilities and provide a report so security can be improved.”

Silver ponytail Hoozuki loudly clicked her tongue at that.

“That isn’t good, Sensei. It means the Stonewalls might have complete plans of New Sapporo Castle. In fact, they might as well have master keys to all the Shogunate’s crucial facilities across the archipelago.”

Their job was to determine the weaknesses in the country’s most important bases and help fill in those security holes, but what if they failed to report on all the holes they discovered? They would have free access to any missile base or underground shelter they wanted.

That explained how they had so easily accessed the Shogunate’s max security prison in Abashiri to safely take that old man’s life. They would have measured out for themselves exactly where they needed to dig a tunnel to get in.

“Any actual names or numbers?” cautiously asked Hoozuki the cool beauty. “And what about the grandson of that old man…Murakami Shouzou, was it? We still don’t know his name.”

“I found it all here, but it’s been blotted out so I can’t read it. There’s some separate security system in place.”

“Sensei, you can leave that to me. I’ll have that rude mosaic gone in no time.”

With a barbaric smile, Asagao held her phone out above Sugiyado’s phone. She must have accessed his with short-range wireless because it filled in the missing parts of the documents like some kind of AR. The randomized redaction signal was removed and the hidden text was revealed.

Just then, they heard a low rumbling.

This was different from when they had entered. The heavy main door to the room was opening.

“(Asagao, the data is on your phone, right? Then let’s withdraw for now.)”

“(Don’t be silly, Ouka. I couldn’t possibly copy over all the data from this entire server room. It’s larger than a library. The data is organized by an index, but it’s scattered all over these systems. Grabbing the data from just one of them won’t give us anything readable!)”

“(In other words, we have to stay here while the decryption completes? What should we do, Sensei?)”

Hoozuki the cool beauty pressed him to make a decision.

They could already hear approaching footsteps.

They had no idea who this was. This large space had more computers than a library had bookcases, so the odds were low whoever-this-was was headed to the exact machine they were plugged into. But the fact remained they had nowhere to hide. Simply walking down the central aisle would let you see if anyone was hiding behind the machines lined up like bookcases.

What would they do?

Would they run?

Would they stay?

Or would they eliminate this person?

“…”

Sugiyado Souha grabbed his down jacket and swung it out like a crescent moon.

And.

### 6: Find a Reason for Your Choice

“…?”

Someone seemed to gasp in slight puzzlement.

There seemed to be more than one person here.

One person casually peered down the row Sugiyado’s group was hiding in and someone else spoke to them.

“Is something wrong, Princess?”

“No.”

Just like with a library’s bookcases, there was nothing for Sugiyado and the other three to hide behind.

And yet that was the response from the kimono-wearing beauty of around 20 who had been addressed as “princess”.

She had black hair that fell all the way to her ankles and she wore an old-fashioned junihitoe.

Was that the official uniform of the castle’s princess?

“Nothing is wrong. Now, Murakami, what did you want to tell me that required coming all the way down here? Couldn’t we have discussed this in the tower?”

Needless to say, she had not lied to protect some unknown intruders she saw. She had no reason to do so.

Then why had the princess said that?

The answer was very simple. When she had looked down that row while walking down the central aisle, she truly had not seen anyone there.

It was all thanks to that down jacket.

Sugiyado had frozen his removed jacket and used it as a shield while backing against the wall with the girls.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the book.

That ninja technique was so primitive it was more often used in comedies, but the human eye was notoriously bad at seeing things under certain conditions and in certain environments. For example, it was well known that your sense of perspective failed to work on a pure white snowfield or salt flat.

It was all in how you used it.

This large space was kept as cold as a refrigerated warehouse to keep the large computers from overheating, so freezing his removed down jacket and covering its surface with white frost was enough to create the perfect camouflage. If someone saw it from a distance while taking a general look at the scene, they would fail to notice anything. And since it was frozen, it would also fool thermo sensors. Both due to the white frost and the down jacket’s layer of air used for insulation.

There was, however, one problem.

“(Wait, wait, wait. I’m going to stick out. Closer! Move in closer!)”

“(I can’t move any further than this, Asagao!)”

“(Ouka, you just want to stay as close to Sensei as you can get, don’t you? Just so you know, I’ve heard coming on too strong on the first date can scare guys away!)”

It was a makeshift shield, so Sugiyado and the other three had to squeeze in really tight to fit behind it.

But the boy ignored that close proximity as he focused all his concentration on his ears to listen in on the conversation happening outside the barrier.

He had already noticed a few things of interest in the initial short exchange.

Princess.

And Murakami, the same family name as the old man.

“…”

Sugiyado shoved his face into the chest of the closest undeveloped girl. Right now, he needed any kind of unusual memory he could find.

(Something other than a ninja would have been best, but I can’t be picky right now.)

For the most part, long-term memories were not so much forgotten as they were fused with other memories until they lost all meaning. But if you intentionally placed the memory in the wrong category to separate it from similar experiences, the information would last longer.

“(Eek!? S-Sensei! As one of your fully-trained kunoichis, I’m not going to get flustered over something like this, but I’d still prefer you didn’t breathe in the air from my chest! Could you please explain what this is about? O-or at least don’t bite too hard?)”

Despite what she said, Ouka seemed plenty flustered, but that was not what he wanted to remember. The distant conversation was his top priority.

The conversation was held between a young man and woman a little older than Sugiyado.

But after walking another row along the central aisle, they moved out of view.

“I must earnestly ask you to reconsider everything that is happening here.”

“How many times must I repeat myself here? I have no choice in the matter. Murakami, you cannot become a hero. That has already been determined, so accept your lot in life. An individual’s power is not enough to change history.”

“Princess.”

“These dangerous ideas of yours will only put New Sapporo Domain in danger, so I cannot allow any of them to bear fruit. Ask me about this once more and I will be forced to imprison you. Even if you are my most trusted ninja.”

They both must have been restless because they returned to this aisle.

Sugiyado could not let his guard down.

If they appeared in the corner of those two’s vision for even a split second and their presence here was detected, alarms would go off across this entire area of the city.

Asagao whispered a question while pressed against his back.

“(So is that Princess Karin? I heard she has temporarily taken over the domain for her bedridden father.)”

If the old man’s grandson was her “most trusted ninja”, he must have worked his way very deeply into the castle. And even if this was an unofficial discussion, it was unusual for the princess temporarily ruling in her father’s stead to leave the castle tower during her official duties. These two must have had a fairly strong bond between them.

“Princess, I know you are aware what circumstances the New Sapporo Domain…no, the entire Hokkaido Area finds itself in.”

“Yes, the underground linear motor trains have long since been stopped and the problems only worsen. But that is exactly why I intend to do what I consider best. And unfortunately, that differs with the path you prefer. Return to the path I have prepared for you, Murakami. The path you want will only bring bloodshed to this northern land and its innocent people.”

“…”

“Do you defy me, Murakami?”

“I will suppress my own desires and do what is necessary. Even if it means burning the castle down.”

“And that is why you called me down here, isn’t it?”

“Prepare yourself.”

Something glinted in the young man’s hand.

His ninja tool was a silver-colored musical instrument resembling a long flute or baton. That iron flute was a versatile weapon that could be used to bludgeon, launch poisoned darts, slash or jab with the claw on the side, and even swing around on a chain to break armor.

But Princess Karin actually seemed to respond with a snort of laughter.

She brushed her long hair from her shoulder with one hand and spoke down to the young man.

“What do you hope to accomplish after capturing me? I do hope the answer isn’t ‘kill me’.”

“…”

“Whether or not this rebellion succeeds, you will no longer have a place in this castle. Murakami, you have heard about the ‘trouble’ outside, haven’t you? You have nowhere to run. Not anymore.”

“Princess, are you saying-!?”

“Hee hee. I have merely received reports as the local political ruler and keeper of the peace. No more and no less.”

The junihitoe beauty remained entirely calm even as she made a sort of confession by revealing information that only the culprit could know.

She placed a hand over her mouth to hide her teeth even as she smiled.

“Won’t you please do as I say, Murakami? Do you not find the words of your substitute ruler to be trustworthy?”

He could never say he was doubting the person he had sworn loyalty to. That alone could be deemed intent to rebel.

So the isolated young man had to force out his words.

“I am simply following the path I believe to be right. Even if it means crossing blades with you.”

But was this the truth behind the attack on Abashiri and the killing of that old man? To rob this disobedient ninja of anyone else to rely on and leave him trapped in her castle? Had it all happened for no more reason than that?

This was an isolationist military nation.

It was ruled by the Shogunate who had maintained the principle of Kirisute Gomen in the modern era, so the Shogun’s family and the Daimyos were given preferential treatment in all things. The crime of rebelling against them was punished by execution of the culprit’s entire family. And that applied even if the rebellion was discovered and stopped in advance.

In that sense, Princess Karin’s preemptive strike may not have violated the Shogunate’s laws .

“…”

But silver ponytail Hoozuki frantically grabbed Sugiyado’s shoulder.

“(What do we do, Sensei? At this rate, the princess will be killed!? That ninja’s relative was killed just in case , so he has no reason to stop now!)”

“(But, Sensei, if we intervene to rescue her, the entire New Sapporo Domain will know we’re here.)”

Asagao was not wrong either. The ninja world was not the same as the samurai one. They were sometimes faced with a decision that had no right answers.

There was no time.

Sugiyado Souha replayed everything he had seen and heard in his mind.

The old man in Abashiri had seemed to know something, but he had been killed by the Stonewalls and his grandson had been framed for the crime.

The data on the Stonewalls had been hidden so not even Elite Ninjas like Ouka’s group could access it.

New Sapporo Castle had likely been taken over by the Stonewalls without anyone outside the wiser.

The way those two spoke to each other suggested that young man had a fair amount of authority within the castle and that remained even after it was secretly hijacked.

Princess Karin was working to protect New Sapporo Domain and this Murakami ninja was trying to stop her.

Even if it meant drawing his blade and harming her.

“(What do we do, Sensei?)” whispered Ouka as if making a final check.

He knew there was no time.

“…”

So he gathered his resolve.

### 7: The Clash

The wind whipped up.

80% of a ninja battle happened during the advance preparations. After all, they were primarily saboteurs. They would be easily crushed if it came to a head-on battle, so they always needed to do a thorough investigation before fighting. They would blend into the local area, construct false connections to gather information, locate enemy weaknesses and seams in their relationships that could be secretly widened into greater rifts, procure necessary materials, determine the optimum time and place, and then, after all that had been done, sneak in and make a surprise attack from the shadows.

So once things began, a ninja always moved swiftly.

In that moment, Sugiyado Souha swept aside his camouflage – the frozen down jacket – and rushed out with the force of a crossbow bolt. He had mastered the use of his body in the fields engineering and perception.

First of all, his movements were fast.

He suddenly sprang up from a curled-up position to reach his top speed almost instantly. If a normal person tried that, they could easily tear a ligament or muscle.

Also, his movements slipped outside of people’s perception.

After initially charging top speed toward his opponent to instill instinctual fear and caution in them, he began to jump irregularly around, kicking off the side of a large computer and then landing on top of it.

Those 3m obstacles could be cleared with sport techniques.

They were laid out like the bookshelves in a library.

That meant there was plenty of space between the top of the computers and the ceiling. But people naturally assumed other people would stay on the floor and use the aisles, so their eyeballs would refuse to move in the right direction at first. Meanwhile, he filled the nearly 20m distance between them.

After running to the end of the row of large computers, he pulled two air-pressure kunais from the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Once he spread those deadly wings, he only had to take flight.

He attacked from directly above.

On one side was the young man dressed in a pitch-black ninja outfit.

On the other side was the Japanese beauty in a junihitoe and with ankle-length black hair.

Sugiyado knew exactly which one to aim at.

His target was Princess Karin, who was temporarily ruling this domain.

The unpleasant clang of well-forged steel on steel reverberated through the room.

He had planned for a counterattack from Murakami – hence the two kunais. But who had deflected the second one?

Yes.

Airborne Sugiyado Souha pushed back against the Murakami youth’s attack, but he had also set things up so his other blade would tear into Princess Karin’s vitals.

There was only one possible person who could have deflected that air-pressure kunai.

“I see.” Sugiyado kicked off the wall to shift the timing of his fall just enough that they could not target him as he landed. “Princess Karin, it would seem you aren’t just a sheltered girl who was put in charge simply for being her father’s daughter.”

“…”

She had pulled something from her sleeve at the last second, but it was not a dagger like you expect of a powerful family’s daughter.

It was a handheld hammer.

The one-handed hammer was entirely made of metal, even the handle. It could be used to simply hit things, or the string wrapped around its handle could be unwound to swing it around more erratically. Also, the handle was hollow. Why was that? It was the same as the disguised knives the Cyrillic Empire specialized in. By loading a matchlock gun bullet, it could be fired from outside the hammer’s range for a surprise attack.

She used a mining tool combined with an explosive.

And she was skilled enough to deflect an attack from a former Hidden One like Sugiyado Souha.

She was definitely with the Hole.

She showed all the distinctive signs of the Stonewalls who specialized in digging tunnels.

Yes.

There was a lot of confusing information here, but only a few key pieces mattered at the moment.

A trap had been laid for Murakami and his blood-related grandfather had been killed.

He fought with an elegant iron flute. He was a ninja, but a very different type from the muddy hole-diggers.

If Murakami was a Song ninja a step removed from the Stonewalls, then Sugiyado was much more curious about what Princess Karin had said here.

“It’s all for New Sapporo Domain and the north as a whole, huh?”

He could make a pretty good guess what this was about.

“But I haven’t heard what exactly you’re doing. Anyone can claim to have justice on their side, but what that means differs a lot between different people. Now, I just hope this isn’t anything as dangerous as a destructive coup d’etat or joining forces with the Cyrillic Empire.”

“Insolent boy.”

“Whatever’s going on in this domain, I am praying that you are the real Princess Karin . If a body double attacked her ruler and took her place to take control of the domain, there isn’t much hope left for you.”

Make no mistake here.

Sugiyado Souha was no longer a ninja serving the Shogunate. He was no more than a prisoner. Wielding a blade and even being outside the prison at all only added to his list of crimes. He was not fighting on the Shogunate’s command or to bring about world peace.

An old man had died with regret in his heart.

In his final moments, he had worried his fate would put his grandson in danger.

That lonely old man had taught Sugiyado so much while he was in prison.

So.

White steam erupted across the entire area. Sugiyado had jabbed an air-pressure kunai into a nearby pipe and the chemical coolant for the computers had rapidly vaporized.

He spun around.

He did not care about Princess Karin’s conspiracy right now.

“Hey!!”

Murakami tried to shout something within the obscuring steam, but Sugiyado was already on the move. He flipped the air-pressure kunai around in his hand and slammed the bottom of the grip against the side of the young man’s neck to knock him out like a switch had been thrown.

“Sensei,” whispered a voice in his ear.

“Take care of it, Ouka.”

He hated to admit it, but Sugiyado Souha had a weight limit. At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He had no hope of carrying an unconscious person around on his own.

Then Asagao, the youngest girl who specialized in information warfare, spoke to him.

“(I’ve managed to piece together all the data on the Stonewalls. I’ve recombined all the necessary parts on my mobile device, so we can leave this place now, Sensei.)”

Then leave they would.

If Princess Karin was acting like this, taking a peek inside the castle tower would not be a good idea.

They needed to leave New Sapporo Castle.

“––––––”

Sugiyado heard a whispering beyond the white steam.

Either due to the ankle-length hair or the multilayered junihitoe, she appeared to have the silhouette of an inhuman serpent.

And that monster threw resentment his way in human language.

“You have sealed your fate here, insolent boy.”

Curses were common in this field.

But Sugiyado had yet to see one that actually accomplished anything.

## Chapter 2

### 1: The Stonewall Girls

It was already dusk.

However, the quiet of the late hour was obliterated by deafening sirens and the tremor of army boots marching in perfect unison.

The commotion had spread beyond just the castle. Trucks and large transport helicopters loaded with fully-equipped armored samurai had been deployed to set up two or even three layers of blockades.

The moat was always lit up once the sun set and the tourists outside of that aimed their phone cameras toward the vehicles and samurai, but they all tilted their heads once they did. Their screens were covered by secret preservation AR, special markers that said “Recording Not Allowed”. Mobile devices these days did not even come with a paper user’s manual, so most of them probably had no idea their phones did that.

Meanwhile…

“So you only managed to drag some filthy guy out of there? Really? That was honestly all you managed to accomplish???”

Hanasawa Bara spoke in a disinterested way from the driver’s seat of a food truck designed to cook crepes, just like you could find at any tourist destination in any part of the world. Needless to say, that was the mobile base she was using to pick up Sugiyado Souha and the others after they left the castle.

She had changed into her casual clothing to blend into her surrounding, but with her, that still meant a fancy red dress. She almost looked like a princess, but that worked well when combined with the mistaken assumption that she was a tourist destination vendor. In fact, with her sexy body and red ringlet curls, she would have looked more conspicuous in a plain track suit or jumpsuit.

She even shared that benefit with Shizukuma Asagao who wore her baggy-sleeved and short-skirt white military uniform in the passenger seat. When the two of them sat side by side, their clothing seemed to match.

The black bob cut girl let out an exasperated sigh.

“Stop lashing out because we all got to enjoy a secret date while you were stuck back at the base. That was an important job.”

“Hmph.”

When the younger girl in the passenger seat out-argued her, Bara could only puff her cheeks out like a child.

However, they remained within the blockade.

They were only just outside the illuminated moat, leaving them in the tourist area that was like a walking path and viewing platform in one. Lines of New Sapporo Domain armored trucks were roughly driving past just a few meters away even now. The castle’s soldiers and bodyguards were shouting angrily at the people that photography was banned. The enemy never expected their quarry to be right under their nose, but certain preparations were still needed when making a surprise attack like this.

When blessed with the opportunity to work in a group, you always needed to keep one of your people “outside” if at all possible.

Sugiyado Souha had driven that rule into their heads because he wanted to raise them into ninjas who could return from missions alive, not just act as artillery shells that only made one-way trips. But being stuck with that job was never fun. Just when you thought you could go on a mission with your beloved teacher and enjoy a secret date that would end the instant you were found, you had to stay behind. Having to wait all on your own until sunset felt like having part of your one and only adolescence sold off against your will. Bara really wanted to curse her own rock-paper-scissors luck.

“Anyway, drive slow and safe.”

“I know that.”

Speeding out of there would give them away immediately. Bara even kept the headlights on the gentle low beams for the benefit of the oncoming traffic. She drove the crepe food truck calmly and slowly away from the park in front of the moat.

“You got that data out from the depths of New Sapporo Castle, didn’t you? Did you get any details on those Stonewalls?”

Bara had performed her own interrogation while they were gone, but she had not found anything more than the group’s name.

“I was planning to reveal this once Sensei rejoined us, but whatever.”

Asagao attached her phone (which she had so thoroughly modified on the inside that it was close to being a cyber war weapon) to the food truck’s navigation system.

“The Stonewalls have around 300 combat members, but these are the main four. And Princess Karin is of course at the very top.”

“…”

Kairou Amamo.

Age: 16. Female.

An expert at terrain-effect attacks made using pure excavation techniques. Brings confusion to the entire battlefield with almost any type of terrain changes, including quicksand, marshes, pitfalls, falling rocks, landslides, and even volcanic activity and water vapor explosions. One of the few survivors of her attacks said “a dragon is hidden in the earth”.

Taganuma Yukizasa.

Age: 13. Female.

An expert at combat in enclosed and dark places. Shows the true value of her short height and limbs while fighting in complex indoor environments filled with countless obstacles. The way she persistently sticks with her target has earned her the nickname of Enemy Stalker.

Horisato Oume.

Age: 18. Female.

An expert at chemical reactions, including explosions. That includes the obvious like guns and explosives, but also includes the use of incomplete combustion to create smokescreens or poison gas. Her skills also give her a specialty in medicines and treating wounds.

And.

Shirahama Karin.

Age: 20. Female.

The princess of a domain who chose to master the “etiquette” of a ninja in order to survive in the Machiavellian world of politics. Has mastered every technique of the Stonewall school, but also possesses the strategic mindset needed to view the big picture of the outside world. A next-generation leader who can freely use the light and dark – the clean and the unclean.

(Not that we can trust the ages and photos given here.)

As an expert in disguises and flirtation, Hanasawa Bara told herself to not accept this data at face value.

Were all the others girls because that was more comfortable for Princess Karin at the top? No, she had apparently convinced that young Murakami man to join her forces, so maybe it was her subordinates who had decided to surround her with girls.

Bara was normally one of the ninjas who worked to preserve the public order, so she knew what conditions would be used to choose checkpoint locations at times like this. She accurately drove the crepe food truck around while making an exasperated comment.

“Quite the distinguished group.”

“Right?”

“I can’t believe that’s what you spent your secret date on. Sensei has to learn not to talk about other girls all the time.”

“Right!? Ouka is sulking pretty hard, so be on your guard around her.”

With the talk of terrain and explosives, that group sounded even more flashy than Bara’s group. This northern land was one of the few places in the country that was flat all the way to the horizon. Those skills were likely what they had honed to push back any large armies the Cyrillic Empire sent in. And in addition to the largescale attacks and high firepower, they had the assassin types who could use the confusion to pinpoint strike the enemy commander or armory. The knights would be preparing to tear into the enemy formation while the rooks and bishops were making a mess of the board, so you could not let your guard down.

Asagao gave a fearless smile in her white military uniform.

“The documents call them High Ninjas, but it’s possible they intentionally held back during their advancement exams so they wouldn’t stand out.”

“They seem to fight under completely different rules and on a completely different scale from us.”

“That just means we can’t let our guard down no matter what.”

And.

As we change focuses, the vehicle shook slightly.

There was no way to tell the time of day in the enclosed back of the truck. Sugiyado Souha and the Murakami youth were confronting each other in there. However, the young man had his iron flute and other weapons taken from him and he was tied to a chair.

Sugiyado’s eyes fell on a different weapon than the main iron flute.

It was a cross shuriken given a sharkskin surface.

(Old man.)

But letting his feelings show would accomplish nothing as a ninja. He hardened his heart so he could get down to business before the young man noticed.

Just to be safe, he had Ouka and Hoozuki with him here.

“(Boo. Why’d he have to invite another guy onto our secret date?)”

“(Don’t complain, Ouka. If you refuse to wait, you’ll never get your reward.)”

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

No matter how much of an advantage he seemed to have, he could not forget that. In shogi terms, Sugiyado Souha was like the lance. He might seem specialized for this field, but that illusion vanished as soon as his weakness was discovered. And he had no way of fighting back even if he noticed it had been discovered.

So if he had help, it was safest to accept it.

“If there’s something you want to talk about, then go ahead and talk.”

Sugiyado pulled a chair across from the young man and sat in it. Ouka and Hoozuki changed positions to lean on the back of that chair.

“But we have nothing we really want to talk about. To be honest, I’m not interested in some large conspiracy. I achieve my goal as long as you’re removed from all that danger. The simplest solution there would be to knock you out with an anesthetic and then dump you in some remote village no one’s ever heard of. If you don’t do anything, that’s what will happen. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Who are you? And those two aren’t your average girls.”

Ouka looked miffed the young man had singled out her and Hoozuki. It was true they were Elite Ninjas, but she must have felt like Sugiyado deserved that sort of praise too.

At any rate, the young man’s confusion was understandable. Everyone knew a captured ninja was not going to have a good time, so he must not have expected them to have a little chat like this.

The scarf boy relaxed his shoulders and spoke a certain name.

But not the young man’s.

“Murakami Shouzou.”

“Kh.”

“Do you see how I got involved in this now? Princess Karin wasn’t bluffing. She really did do it .”

For a while, the young man said nothing.

Sugiyado simply waited.

He could have told the young man that a professional ninja needed to suppress his emotions and remain coldly logical to survive, but he chose not to.

“I see.” The young man who had inherited the Murakami name eventually got some words out. “I see.”

“Let’s set aside our positions as professionals for a moment.” Sugiyado started again with his voice low. “I’m not working myself to the bone for the state or the Shogunate here. I’m a prisoner from Abashiri, just like that blunt but caring old man, so don’t think I’m some stickler for the rules. Let’s keep this short. If you waste my time, I’ll go with the ‘anesthetize you and dump you on the side of the road’ option.”

“…”

“Ouka, prepare the halothane tank and calculate out the right amount for a standard body weight of 68kg. And really, if we’re going to recommend retiring from this dangerous line of work and living a leisurely second life, we should probably gift him with some mild lasting effects.”

“Understood, Sensei. I’ll add 10 to the normal number. That should give him some chronic tingling in the limbs.”

“O-okay, okay!”

The young man must have thought there was nothing he could do while bound to the chair. And with enough of a lasting effect to take him out of the fight, he would forever lose his chance to rush in and solve the problem here in New Sapporo Domain. Or the problem related to his grandfather’s death. But his pride still had him sounding reluctant as he opened his mouth.

“I am Murakami Michihiko. I was sent from Edo as an external observer for the entire Hokkaido Area!”

“Observer?”

“Hokkaido isn’t the only place with one. Ever since the Doshusei Reform split the archipelago into 8 Areas, observers are occasionally sent in from the central government to keep an eye on things. The idea is to make sure none of the regional governments try to rebel using the very autonomy granted them by the Shogun.”

Hoozuki waved something in her hand. It looked like a silver flute, but it was actually the ninja weapon that young man trusted with his life.

That old man had said he created ninja weapons for his grandson and they were from the Song school, so that iron flute may have contained something of the old man in its design.

Sugiyado Souha made sure not to let his emotions show on his face as he spoke.

“So you are a step removed from the Stonewall hole-digging experts with deep roots in the Hokkaido Area.”

“You’d be wrong there,” said Murakami Michihiko with self-deprecation in his voice. “The Stonewalls were the contact point for my observer duties in the Hokkaido Area. They acted as an intermediary, so we did interact.”

His job was to arrive from outside and determine any deficiencies in the local system. That meant detecting this oddity in New Sapporo Domain was a major success for him, but the conversation in the castle’s server room suggested they had not been enemies to begin with.

He had likely planned to use Princess Karin’s support as a foothold while he began to investigate the rest of the Hokkaido Area. He never would have imagined that the safe zone he had discovered was in fact rotten to the core.

No.

Maybe it was more like he had stumbled across a truth he would have much rather remained ignorant of.

“It’s all about sharing,” said Michihiko while still bound to the chair. “All sorts of technology were introduced to fight back against the Cyrillic Empire, including the slow-melting artificial snow, the two strategic anti-air laser beam cannons, and the four large-caliber railguns at the princess’s New Sapporo Castle, but this land is simply too vast. That method of protecting the island costs too much. The Empire doesn’t even have to cross the ocean now. They can just sit back and wait for New Sapporo Domain to economically collapse and for the rest of the Hokkaido Area’s domains to follow suit.”

“…”

The truck must have made a turn at an intersection because they felt a powerful force from the right.

They were using this food truck because New Sapporo Domain and the rest of the Hokkaido Area were now “car cities”. Why was that? Because the underground linear motor train meant to connect the six domains had been shut down for defense reasons.

Or so it was said, but was that really true? Linear motor trains used electromagnets to move at speeds greater than 500km/h, so they of course required a massive amount of power. That lower-priority guzzler of power had been eliminated in a way that would not concern the people too much.

“Everything requires power, but there is only so much they can produce themselves and Honshu still refuses to allow the installation of an undersea power cable. Maybe they don’t want even more of the country’s nuclear power to be focused on Tsugaru Domain, but the prevailing rumor within the castle is that Honshu fears giving the north enough power to isolate themselves.”

So had opinions differed on how to secure the power they needed?

“That left only one option. Or so Domain Lord Hatsunaga believed,” said Michihiko. “The importation of core infrastructure. It isn’t that uncommon on the continent. It’s the same as having a neighboring country dispose of your trash or having two countries share water and sewer services when a major river runs through them both.”

“Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

“Yes.” Michihiko’s ropes strained. “The Karafuto Route. You heard talk about the northern Wakkanai Domain expanding into a Dejima, right? The idea was to lay out an undersea power cable from there to gain the needed power.”

Instead of Sugiyado, it was twintailed Ouka who was leaning on the boy’s chair from behind who frowned at that. But Sugiyado was the one in charge of this interrogation, so she seemed reluctant to interrupt.

The young man let out a self-deprecating sigh.

“Yeah, it’s completely backwards, isn’t it? They would be relying on the Empire to power the equipment they need to protect themselves from the Empire. They would be helpless as soon as the Empire shut off the power, so they would essentially be presenting their Achilles’ heel to the enemy.”

“…”

Sugiyado thought for a bit.

This was all about deciding who to sell themselves off to: the Shogunate, the Cyrillic Empire, a corporation such as a power company, or an academic institution like a university. Whoever they asked to supply the power they needed would then hold the lifeline to the entire Hokkaido Area. That was a big enough deal to bring down the balance between the Four Occupations.

The Shogunate had refused, so who was their next best bet?

Had they arrived at that choice through the process of elimination, or had they intentionally steered toward the Shogunate’s enemy out of simple spite.

“But you said that was the Domain Lord’s idea, right? Do you mean the Princess ruling in his place sees things differently?”

“I imagine she poisoned him. I just hope she still has enough of a heart left that it was something nonfatal.”

Poisoning your own father even nonfatally did not sound like the act of someone “with a heart”.

They had not seen inside New Sapporo Castle’s tower, but had people’s sensibilities really grown so warped in there?

Murakami Michihiko continued with a bitter look on his face.

“I don’t know where she intends to get it, but Princess Karin apparently plans to acquire a massive amount of power from a different route. But energy is energy – it can be used for good or evil. We’re talking about a power source large enough to run the defense system covering the entire Hokkaido Area, so is there any way it can’t be used for the wrong things ? As seen with nuclear power, energy can as easily bring peace as it can bring destruction.”

Ouka and Hoozuki’s eyes wandered a bit at the mention of nuclear power.

The incident they had once caused had begun with the theft of an ultra-small modular nuclear reactor being carried by a freight train.

But Sugiyado did not touch on their past wounds.

“That isn’t the crux of the issue, is it?”

“No. There is a hurdle beyond how the power is used. Even if this power source is perfectly safe and peaceful, they still have to prove that somehow. What if people mistakenly believe it could explode when used incorrectly? If people start to think they’re hiding a massive bomb, it could lead to war between the Hokkaido Area and the Empire, or even a civil war between the Hokkaido Area and Honshu.”

“I see,” said Sugiyado.

Princess Karin, leader of the Stonewalls, was also a risk here.

People were never free of their own minds.

The greatest risk of a revolution or uprising was when the thread of tension went slack. As soon as they were freed from having to figure out some way to fix their power problem, she might just reach for a fearsome switch.

She might not just use that power for defense.

What if she decided they could win if they went on the offensive and launched a needless attack on the Cyrillic Empire? Once the Empire had a justification for retaliation, they would be more than happy to attack. That could lead to a long, drawn-out war fought with overwhelming numbers.

And…

“Okay, I can see the flaw in the Lord and the Princess’s plans, but how were you planning to safely escape this situation?”

“I think the supposed threat of the Empire is overblown. Whenever he ran into trouble with the ordinary finances, Domain Lord Hatsunaga would work up some extra funding in the name of military expansion. He started talking up the threat of the Empire as no more than a way to get the funding he needed, but that eventually grew into an actual concrete fear that is now draining money from the entire Hokkaido Area.”

“…”

“I have no intention of supporting the Empire or taking them lightly. I am a Shogunate ninja tasked with protecting this nation, after all. But if we can accurately assess the threat, we should be able to better defend ourselves with less waste.”

Sugiyado doubted the young man was lying.

At the very least, the ninja named Murakami Michihiko believed that to be true and was willing to bet his life on it.

The young man said more while Sugiyado pondered the matter.

“I must stop Princess Karin’s project no matter what. I am willing to offer up my own life to do so! I won’t ask you to help me, but at least drop me off somewhere in New Sapporo Domain. I won’t cause you any trouble, so let me clean up this problem!!”

“Is that so?” said Sugiyado.

Silence fell for a while.

But the former Hidden One appeared to have already made up his mind.

The crepe food truck’s brakes squealed as it came to a stop. They must have been at some sort of destination.

Sugiyado rapped on the thin metal door and called outside.

“You heard him, Ekaterina. The rest is in your Imperial hands.”

Michihiko stared blankly at the boy.

He probably honestly had no idea what those words meant. But this was all very real. The metal door was roughly thrown open from the outside and fully-equipped soldiers with identities hidden by masks, helmets, and goggles stormed onto the truck.

The words they exchanged were not even in Japanese.

This entire place had suddenly started to feel awfully Cyrillic.

“What? Eh!? What’s going on here!?”

Sugiyado waved a hand dismissively and said one thing more.

“You can take him away if you want, but leave the chair and rope.”

Murakami Michihiko’s mouth was covered now and he was helplessly carried outside.

To reiterate, Sugiyado Souha’s objective was to fulfill his promise with that dead old man: take care of that kid. So why would he ever give “that kid” any freedom to act if he was only going to recklessly run into danger?

He would not let the young man die.

Even if the young man resented him for it.

“…”

The crepe food truck was empty now, but it creaked as someone new stepped inside.

She wore an imbalanced outfit of a thick coat worn over a sheer camisole. Her skin was far too white to be Asian and her ankle-length hair was a very light platinum blonde. She had a slim outline all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes, so she would have fit right in as a ballerina or figure skater. She seemed something like a rose scattering excessive sex appeal through the simple act of walking, but she was more mechanical and precise than that.

“(I can’t believe this is happening on our date.)”

“(Hold your tongue, Ouka. You’ll lose points.)”

Ouka and Hoozuki looked somewhat exasperated.

Simply walking around looking like that was a big deal given the archipelago’s current isolationist policies.

The blonde beauty giggled in a bewitching way.

“It has been too long, Comrade Souha.”

“I am aware that not even the Empire addresses people that way anymore, you know? Where did you swim in from this time? Through a snowmelt pipe? You don’t smell like a sewer, at least.”

“That intel is the Neva River Nymphs’ lifeline, so it is of course a secret. …Until you take a liking to the title of comrade, anyway.”

Simply put, Ekaterina’s Neva River Nymphs were a group of frogmen. Their actions in New Sapporo Domain went undetected because they wore highly-insulated suits and used caustic soda breath purification devices that would function for a maximum of 48 hours straight. That allowed them to move freely around large cities by hiding below the surface of a river or another body of water, including water pipes, sewers, snowmelt pipes, agricultural and industrial waterways, hot spring pipes, and more. They even claimed they could relax more in a rooftop water tank than in a café heated by a fireplace.

“We haven’t spoken directly since the sunken submarine incident, have we? I am glad we can finally repay you for what you did back then, comrade.”

“You didn’t owe me anything. International law says you should work to assist a sunken or beached ship even if it belongs to another country or group.”

“Everyone might know they should do that, but you were the only person the world who did do it.”

She giggled.

The lady had the sweet atmosphere of the female proprietor of a secret salon, but she did not carelessly invade the boy’s personal space. She was like a bouquet of flowers meant to match one’s outfit. She was intentionally dimming her light to avoid clashing with the sex appeal of the less mature kunoichis behind the boy.

Then again, she was also showing off how much she was holding back.

“That was a delicate region of ocean. Our HQ could not let it get out that we were transporting a treaty-violating weapon through that region, so they pretended not to pick up on our SOS and even jammed our signal while disguising it as interference from thunderclouds. If you hadn’t shown up, 103 Neva members would have perished in that chilly, cramped space. Including me, of course.”

Sugiyado softly sighed.

Murakami Michihiko had said New Sapporo Domain was suffering from the tensions they themselves had created out of fear brought on by the country’s isolationist policies. And to rid themselves of that unease, they were growing into “external threat junkies” who endlessly expanded their military. Sugiyado was pretty sure that was accurate.

At the same time, it was looking like the outside world was full of even more conspiracies and misdeeds than the people in the archipelago imagined.

But for now…

“Babysit him for us.”

“Understood. I won’t even ask what this about.”

“And if you can, I would like to learn what the Empire is doing right now. How pressing do they see the situation with Japan?”

“Why even ask me when you know any answer I give will be designed to benefit the Empire? Just so you know, I am a descendant of the maids who served the very nobles who feared for the country’s future and chose to serve Rasputin cakes laced with cyanide.” She sounded exasperated and shrugged. “There is nothing I can tell you, so you can make your own guesses based on the circumstantial evidence.”

(Well, if they really were preparing for a war on the level of lava bursting up from the earth, Ekaterina’s team wouldn’t still be here in New Sapporo Domain.)

He had guessed that much from the moment she responded to his message.

That meant the question at hand was what to do about Princess Karin, New Sapporo Domain, and the Stonewalls who were getting worked up over nothing.

“What are your immediate plans, Comrade Souha?” Ekaterina giggled in a way that slightly strengthened her sweet aura. “I take it things in the castle are not going well. But the Shogunate as a whole does not appear to be making a move to crush them, so do you maybe need someone to work behind the scenes here?”

“Ekaterina, I will decide what needs to be done here.”

“And I am offering you materiel or personnel if you need them. The Stonewalls have deep roots in New Sapporo Castle, which makes them problem, does it not? If you know what needs doing, then why not go ahead and do it?”

She had just said she would not ask what this was about, and now this.

Never underestimate the intelligence-gathering ability of spies who could hide in any body of water.

“I am not working for the Empire’s benefit here. And another thing, Ekaterina. When trying to get closer to someone, it’s best to let yourself appear more vulnerable.”

“Oh? So you aren’t the type to drown in motherly displays of acceptance?”

Whatever form it took, New Sapporo Domain had indeed managed to maintain a dangerous balance for this long. And just like every other country and group out there, the Cyrillic Empire was not the big bad wolf from a children’s book, but they were also not selfless saints. They would snatch up every opportunity that came along. Even if they did not use their trump card right away, you had to assume it was still there in their deck.

A severe power shortage could cause a blackout in the entire defense system.

If that led to revolution or uprising, another country could possibly use the chaos to attack, but that was an amateurish idea. The Empire was more likely to play the role of cooperative ally from beginning to end and then ask for something equivalent in exchange after the fact. And with a friendly smile on their face all the while.

In her combination of a thick coat and a form-fitting camisole, Ekaterina did not push the issue any further. That lady was an experienced negotiator, so she chose to take a step back here.

“When you have decided what to do, make sure to call the Neva River Nymphs. Whisper the magic word and we will surface from any body of water.”

“I might not be doing anything. Murakami Michihiko is safe now, so I might just decide to leave.”

“No, you will choose to act once you learn what is happening here. This is no different from that submarine. You are not one to weigh the pros and cons before acting, Comrade Souha. That selfless spirit of service is a lovely thing. You would fit in very well with us.”

“…”

“Also.” Just before leaving the crepe food truck, the bewitching woman spoke as if to a child left behind at an amusement park. “I really do want to repay you for your help. As does everyone up on the surface who heard our SOS signal from the submarine but were only allowed to bite their lips and jam it. I won’t deny we have our own plans at play here, but do not forget how I feel.”

That was all.

Once Ekaterina was gone, Sugiyado sighed.

He knew there would be no sign of those river nymphs no matter where you looked on the surface. They had dived underwater.

(Didn’t take her long to incorporate my advice about vulnerability. She always has been quick to follow people’s advice. Although that cute side of her is probably another act meant to draw people in.)

And.

That encounter seemed to have lowered the temperature within the food truck.

Specifically for Ouka and Hoozuki.

“Sensei.”

“First the Kingdom’s queen and now the Empire’s river nymph? You don’t have mistresses in every country around the world, do you?”

They could not hide their exasperation. It was often said you needed to watch out for jealousy and envy when kunoichis gathered, but since ninjas were supposed to use Machiavellianism as a weapon, they really needed to stop letting their own suspicions get the better of them.

The best medicine here would be to firmly deny it.

He had to put them at ease by showing he was confident in his denial. It was a basic but crucial tactic.

“Don’t be dumb, you two. I don’t have a single person you could call a mistress.”

But…

“So you’re saying you do have women all around the world; it’s just that you keep them just distant enough that you can’t call them mistresses?”

“Sensei, there’s such a thing as being too passionate about your work.”

Evidently, he had phrased his denial poorly.

Even on a pirate ship full of outlaws, it was supposedly best to avoid a mixed-gender crew if you wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble.

### 2: Kunoichi Nest

“Heh heh. I knew you would go with mine, Sensei. Welcome to Hanasawa Bara’s love nest!!”

The crepe food truck finally arrived at a proper residence. Sapporo was set up like a go board and Bara had secured a location in the especially messy-looking shopping district of Susukino. That had always been the Hokkaido Area’s leading location for bars and the sex industry, but it had become even more nightless after a major IR move – specifically, establishing a connection with a publicly-run casino. But that was hardly surprising when it was essentially receiving the domain’s seal of approval.

“Eh heh heh, heh heh heh heh heh heh. I missed out on the secret date, but I’m the one who gets to take him home and share his bed!!”

The place had a living room, a VR-equipped home theater system, a simple training room, two indoor baths, and an open-air bath on the balcony that drew water in from a natural hot spring. It also had three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bar counter.

Ouka awkwardly looked around a room large enough to play tennis in.

“What is this place? A hotel? A luxury apartment???”

“It’s an extended stay residential hotel. Maybe those differences are too much for the commonfolk to understand. Just think of it as a villa with a rental contract.”

It was best not to ask how exactly she had managed to get a room like this while keeping her identity secret. Sugiyado only hoped it was something as simple as solving a problem (of her creation) to earn the gratitude of the place’s manager.

Silver ponytail Hoozuki put a hand on her hip and breathed a gentle sigh.

“I guess we can give Bara the bed tonight since we did have her stay behind during our secret date.”

“Sensei, how about a bath? You aren’t in prison anymore, so you can stretch your legs and relax. It isn’t often you can enjoy a natural hot spring as nice as this in a big city.”

He looked over to confirm there were actually two dressing rooms – one for the men’s bath and one for the women’s bath.

“I’ll take you up on that offer.” He sighed. “We can discuss our next move after that.”

“Got it, Sensei.”

A change of clothes was already waiting for him in the dressing room. A full set of his usual clothes plus a bathrobe were neatly folded.

He stripped off his clothes, grabbed a towel, and opened the door to the bath. He found himself on the balcony, so this was apparently an open-air bath. There was not much of a view since it was surrounded by a fence made from bamboo tied together with rope, but it still felt weird to hear the hustle and bustle of the shopping district down below.

He heard some noise from beyond the partition dividing the men’s and women’s baths.

Hoozuki’s voice called over to him.

“I have to know, Sensei. What are you going to do now?”

He washed his sweat away before soaking up to the shoulders in the somewhat whitish bathwater.

He doubted this would do anything for the bolts in his spine or the springs replacing the ligaments in his legs, but he could still feel his body relaxing.

Then he answered Hoozuki’s question.

“To put it simply, I’m going to fulfill my promise to that old man.”

Take care of that kid.

That was all he had promised to Murakami Shouzou, the old man who had saved his life. Michihiko, the man’s grandson, might not want this, but there would be no threat to his life as long as he was in the care of Ekaterina and the others from the Empire. The young man would be free to choose a new life somewhere on Honshu after being given a falsified identity or to leave the country entirely and make a name for himself on the continent.

In that sense, Sugiyado could consider his objective complete at this point.

However…

“Ouka, can you tell me how the Shogunate as a whole will respond to this incident in New Sapporo Domain?”

“Yes, Sensei.”

Ouka’s voice sounded very well-mannered even through the bamboo partition, so she clearly still saw herself as his student.

She also sounded somewhat excited.

“They will probably choose to wait and see how this plays out. It would be concerning if Domain Lord Hatsunaga really has been poisoned by his daughter Princess Karin so she can take his authority for herself, but there is no hard evidence of that at this point. It also is not clear what exactly Princess Karin has done to solve the Hokkaido Area’s power woes. Edo probably considers it too soon to send in a special inspector and freeze New Sapporo Domain’s authority.”

“…”

“And I must remind you that once a ninja, always a ninja. Even if Murakami Michihiko can be perfectly hidden with a new identity created by the Empire, I expect he will be back in New Sapporo Domain sooner or later if the problem here is not resolved. I do not know what connection you have with the Empire, but are they really prepared to continue protecting him indefinitely? Looking after someone long-term costs far more than just saving them the one time.”

A sigh could be heard in the steamy air.

But not from Ouka. It came from Sugiyado as he listened to her.

“Which means I can’t just leave. Not until it wouldn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth.”

That opinion had already been lurking in a corner of his mind.

The Shogunate did not seem aware how serious this was, but Princess Karin now had authority over New Sapporo Domain and might have solved the energy problem, strengthening their previously unstable defensive line. What if the tension about her position went slack? Whether it led her to burn out or act rashly, it would still shake her. What if she got it in her head that she could attack and win instead of just defending? The coming conflict might not remain in the north. There was a chance this could lead to the Cyrillic Empire pushing in toward the entire archipelago. Of course, it could also lead to the Shogunate needlessly invading Karafuto or Vladivostok after the blood rushed to their head.

And.

More than any of that.

Even without Murakami Michihiko’s involvement, if Sugiyado were to back out now, the ones ordered to investigate and resolve the problems in New Sapporo Domain would be Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, and Asagao. If he called it quits and that led to his students losing their lives, the regret and self-loathing would probably lead him to commit seppuku.

He could not back down now.

He had to prepare himself to deal with this.

“Fine. I guess I’ll see this through to the end.”

“Heh heh heh.”

That ticklish laughter seemed to come from Asagao.

“?”

“I knew you would say that, Sensei. Wah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Things were taking a disconcerting turn.

Most notably, something suddenly parted down the middle like the curtains over a window or the doors to a giant airport storehouse.

What did?

What else but the bamboo partition separating the men’s and women’s baths?

(Are you kidding me!?)

“What are you doing!?”

He immediately backed away in the whitish water, but there was nothing he could do at this point.

“My, my,” said Bara who had set up this stage herself. “This is a ninja hideout, Sensei. And what kind of ninja mansion doesn’t have trap doors and secret contraptions?”

(Stop trying to pass this off as normal!)

However, a true ninja would not lose his cool at a time like this.

The time had come for Sugiyado Souha to maintain a blank expression no matter what.

“You were the one that taught us that a ninja should throw out all assumptions while in enemy territory, so why would you assume that curtains saying ‘men’s bath’ and ‘women’s bath’ meant the actual bath was divided in two?”

Ouka sounded like she was bragging, but she was also ducking down so far into the bath that it covered not just her shoulders but her chin as well. The red of her nose suggested this had turned out to be a lot more embarrassing than in her imagination.

Simply put, this had originally been just the one bath, but they had forcibly split it in two to catch him off guard. All so they could wait until he had moved far enough into the bath for them to surround him.

Four girls in only towels splashed toward him. They were not even wearing the flesh-colored skintight suits of their ninja outfits.

Asagao happily got to the point at hand.

“All we did was confirm that you never do change, Sensei. Heh heh heh. Yes, I knew you would never abandon the people here. And now it’s time to reward you for that!!”

He was only more confused now, but the other girls seemed to understand. Ouka and Bara refused to look him in the eye, but in a bashful way.

At any rate.

If they were going to do this, they could not hold back. They were a former Hidden One and four Elite Ninja kunoichis, but the Stonewalls led by Princess Karin had at least taken control of this entire domain. They could mobilize an army to eliminate just five people, so they could not let their guard down.

They had no time to spare.

A former Hidden One would not be flustered just from his students surrounding him in nothing but towels. He asked a question while keeping as cool an expression as possible.

“Asagao, I want your opinion since you’re the expert.”

“Why aren’t you blushing!? L-look, I just removed my towel below the water. There’s nothing covering me up anymore!!”

“What is the power situation in New Sapporo Domain…no, across the entire Hokkaido Area?”

“Do I need to dive underwater?”

Asagao was soaking up to her shoulders and she made a fearsome threat to the area between his legs before finally giving in and answering him.

“Boo. Looking back at the records for the past 5 years, they’ve had a lot of spontaneous power outages. They all have reasonable explanations like an accident at a transformer substation, a lightning strike, or whatever, but I think there’s a different reason. Especially since the outages are especially frequent during midsummer and midwinter. Based on the number of ordinary households with air conditioning, they seem to be short around 7 million kilowatts.”

Her mental estimation made sexy Bara frown and cross her arms. Some of the whitish water gathered in the cleavage of her large chest.

“That number doesn’t mean much to me.”

“They’re short about what three pressurized water reactor power plants would provide. To be clear, that’s the number of power plants, not the number of reactors.”

The words rattled off by the youngest girl caused Ouka, who was well on her way to mastering the ninja art of water escape, exchanged a look with Cool Beauty Hoozuki.

That meant more than 10 nuclear reactors.

If Princess Karin had appropriated all of that power for herself, what in the world was she using it for? And since handling that much power incorrectly could lead to a major explosion, couldn’t it be weaponized?

That was a level of “debt” that could not be made up just by covering a large field with solar panels or windmills.

“Commercial nuclear reactors require large quantities of coolant water at all times,” continued Asagao, “Assuming they aren’t being used in outer space, the normal method is to desalinate seawater and use that, so nuclear power plants aren’t well suited for large spaces of land like the Hokkaido Area. And sure enough, the area uses a lot of less-efficient thermal power generation. They’re trying to improve that with MHD generators, but it isn’t anywhere near enough. I can see why they’re short on power.”

Whatever the case, they would figure it out in due time.

While soaking in the whitish water, Sugiyado Souha decided they had to start by investigating how Princess Karin was making up for the insufficient power and what danger that method posed. After all, this was the equivalent of three nuclear power plants all at once. It was best not to speculate, but even if whatever-it-was had been built for peaceful purposes, he was pretty sure someone would be able to abuse it.

“…”

He would figure this out.

Before Princess Karin relaxed and carelessly made a devastating choice.

### 3: Target

The following morning arrived.

You might think of ninjas as working in the shadows of the night, but they would operate in the light of day as well. They would act whenever necessary, they would get enough rest to ensure their top performance, and they would always make sure to remain inconspicuous.

However…

“What the hell? Who is this?”

Sugiyado lightly slapped his hand at something soft near his face.

“Ahn, that’s my butt, Sensei.”

“…”

“By the way, if you turn the other way, you’ll be burying your face in Hoozuki’s chest. Who, I might add, is currently borrowing one of your shirts.”

“Bara? And Hoozuki too?”

“There’s no real time limit for dealing with that old man’s case, is there? So why not take a bit of a detour for some pink and milky-white fun with us?”

“I trusted you to not be like this, but maybe I should rethink relying on you here.”

Four figures scrambled from his bed as quickly as they could manage. They all sat down in a row on the wooden flooring. Those students knew how to tell when Sugiyado Souha was willing to put up with some joking and when he was not.

Bara wore a negligee, Ouka wore pastel pajamas, and they all gave each other cautious looks.

“You disgusted him with the horribly cliché choice to use your chest.” (Bara)

“Using your butt seems worse to me. I mean, that’s your lower body.” (Hoozuki)

“The worst one was Ouka. She climbed headfirst under the covers and fell asleep with her face between his legs. And that was very much intentional on her part.” (Asagao)

“Hey, don’t act all pure yourself, Asagao. We all know why you’re wearing those over-the-top panda costume PJs.” (Ouka)

Nothing he said seemed to get through to them.

Technically speaking, they were his former students and were now independent Elite Ninjas. Responding to this oddity in New Sapporo Domain was the expected response for spies who served the Shogunate, so there was no real reason for them to do so under his command. In fact, they could earn a lot of points if they bound him and threw him back into Abashiri’s special prison (even if they were the ones who had broken him out in the first place).

He could not forget that this was not the expected situation. It only worked thanks to so much kindness on their part.

“Now, then.”

Letting that show would only make the kunoichis more self-conscious, so he casually kept it hidden while he too left the bed. He wanted to check on something before he took a shower.

A Fount of Knowledge, a complex device hooked up to various communication devices, sat on the living room’s glass table.

“Let’s see how much this has gathered.”

“Wait, Sensei! Let me use the Fount!”

Asagao hopped to her feet and followed after him. That seemed to restore the flow of time for the other girls because they began to move as well.

Staying focused at all times during an important mission would only lead to burnout. They needed to get a set amount of rest at set times, but anyone who had been up all night worrying about something would know that was much easier said than done. People tended to fall out of their usual rhythm and routine on important days or when not allowed a single mistake. And the effect was greatest when their own life or someone close to them’s life was on the line.

But it was also true that shutting your eyes and falling asleep would cause time to pass.

It was a waste to not use that time to accomplish something.

That was why Sugiyado had altered his phone’s settings to have the device automatically gather information while he was resting. It did not take all that much intelligence to use a crawler to gather data like you were pulling a drain plug in the vast ocean of the internet.

Extremely small Asagao licked her lips as she checked on the device.

“Mechanical data harvesting is fairly indiscriminate, so you end up with a lot. There’s a bit of a trick to filtering the results, so just leave that to me.”

“You make it sound complicated, but isn’t it similar to knowing the best search terms to narrow down the results on a search engine?” asked an exasperated Ouka, but Asagao did not seem remotely bothered.

They were most interested in the core of Princess Karin’s electrical infrastructure, but they were not going to find a specifications document just sitting out there on the open internet.

Still, there were other hints to be found.

The Stonewalls.

The central members of Amamo, Yukizasa, and Oume.

New Sapporo Domain’s classified server had been tampered with to hide those terms, so they held great meaning.

“Here we go.” Asagao seemed to be enjoying herself. “They’re doing a lot to hide their names, but they’ve transported a few cargo containers to different locations. This says they contain…electronic garbage like computers and phones.”

“So pure gold in another form?”

“If you know a little ‘alchemy’, you can get a fair bit from the circuit boards and semiconductors. Since they aren’t crossing the ocean, there’s no need to make payments over fiberoptic where the deal might be discovered.”

“Where are they sending the gold bars in trash form?”

Sugiyado reached over to touch the screen. Asagao twisted her body to complain, but he ignored that.

“The Teine Workshop District in New Sapporo Domain.”

“None of this is concrete.”

Bara was right.

And you could not take their skill in this field lightly. Places like this contained technology even more advanced than global corporations. Modern ninjas like them were pros at preventing the theft of technology by foreign states. They could not exactly do their job without knowing where that technology was found.

In fact, their ninja noses were telling them something here.

Had this been intentionally organized as a collection of small workshops instead of a single major corporation or laboratory so it would not stand out in the paperwork?

It would not be unusual for each individual workshop to be smaller than a convenience store or gas station, but they would cover a 5km square of land when all brought together. If they were all working together as a single large entity instead of competing for survival, then that would be a productive facility with incredible power.

“Is it like taking a skyscraper, cutting apart each division, and spreading those out along the ground, Sensei?”

They used slow-melting artificial snow as an environmental defense policy, two strategic antiaircraft lasers towered up on the outskirts, four 900mm rapid-fire railguns and a moat full of electrolyte liquid sensors protected the castle, and a since-abandoned linear motor train network could be found underground.

This frigid land had large areas of empty space, so the Shogunate’s usual defensive theories did not apply. But who had done R&D on all the equipment used to defend this northern land?

In the modern age, civilian satellite services could be used to search through even the most remote areas of the world, so building a secret base deep in the mountains was meaningless.

However…

“It’s all white, Sensei.”

As Ouka leaned up against him to peer at (Asagao’s) phone, he viewed the satellite and analyzed what he saw.

“That’s probably the artificial snow, but there sure is a lot of it even for the area around New Sapporo Domain. That much seems like it would be a strain on the building rooftops.”

The slow-melting artificial snow was used as an environmental defense.

The idea was for it to slow the advance of an Imperial army arriving from overseas, but that was all hypothetical. Hindering the people’s lives for that would entirely defeat the purpose. And yet there it all was. The thick layer of snow did more than color the image white. It also appeared to obstruct measurements made with infrared and microwave.

Sugiyado chose his words with careful attention to where he was steering the conversation.

“If they’re deploying so much of that ‘defense’, is that some kind of crucial location?”

It only looked like a working class area of plain workshops, but it was actually the same as a company town that controlled the finances of an entire giant automobile factory or semiconductor manufacturer.

“Whether she goes to the Shogunate, the Empire, a company, or a university, Princess Karin thinks relying on someone else for her power means handing them her Achilles heel. That means she will have her own technology division to keep that Achilles heel in her grasp.”

“Is that what this is?” asked Bara.

“It might not look it, but I bet that place has the strictest security. Probably about as difficult as sneaking into an international corporations’ HQ.”

A new electrical system was being set up to recover their defensive infrastructure.

It had to be the equivalent of more than 10 nuclear reactors.

The system used might or might not be dangerous, but Princess Karin and the Stonewalls had at the very least killed one person at Abashiri’s special prison, poisoned the domain lord, and stolen New Sapporo Domain’s authority. Things would not have progressed this far if their reasons were something anyone would accept if they simply explained them.

It would be well worth investigating this (giant strategic military research institute disguised as a) workshop district. Whatever Princess Karin was ultimately thinking, nipping this new electrical system in the bud would mean grasping the Achilles heel of the Stonewalls who had taken over New Sapporo Domain and held great influence over the entire Hokkaido Area.

“Let’s work out a concrete plan,” said Sugiyado. “We don’t have much time.”

“Checking back in time, there are a few facial recognition readings.” Asagao snatched back her phone. “The Stonewalls are hiding their faces to an extent, but they aren’t perfect. Now, I think they’re skilled enough to do a better job, but they get lazy because they know Princess Karin can cover for them.”

“Does that mean one of the other three are defending the shopping district?”

“They appear to be working on a rotation, Sensei. I can’t tell if there’s a schedule or if it’s randomized, but using the most straightforward pattern, I know who will probably be next.”

Perhaps because Asagao herself used her youth as a weapon, she did not hold back the cruel smile as she revealed this information.

“Taganuma Yukizasa. As the youngest, she uses her light weight and short limbs to specialize in combat in closed and dark spaces.”

### 4: Strategic Military Research Institute

The ground and roofs were covered by more than meter of white snow.

This was supposedly out-of-season artificial snow, but the artificial had taken over the natural environment here. It must have had an effect similar to a mist shower because the area felt as cold as the inside of a giant refrigerated warehouse.

This was the Teine Workshop District of northern New Sapporo Domain.

Everything in the city of Sapporo was arranged like a go board, but this one area felt a lot more cluttered and complex. The inconvenience for transportation meant most ordinary traffic avoided the area, so the layout was in fact an intentional way of creating a deserted atmosphere. The place looked like a collection of mid and small-sized city workshops left behind by the times. Without any obvious landmarks like the clock tower, TV station, and New Sapporo Castle, few tourists ever visited. It felt like a place with a closed cycle of locals and only locals.

But all of that was camouflage.

This area buried in white snow had in fact been chosen by Princess Karin as a cutting-edge strategic military research institute that influenced the entire Hokkaido Area’s defensive plans.

Setting up obvious anti-personnel and anti-tank mines or coils of barbed wire would only rouse suspicions, but there were still a variety of traps in evidence. Broken bottles could be seen on the snow as makeshift caltrops, a peek into the back alleys showed kerosene tanks and propane tanks hooked up to wires and switches, and sheets covered in a thick layer of snow would send you tumbling to the ground if you took even a light step onto the rooftops.

It was all very effective without seeming conspicuous if an ordinary person happened to get injured by one.

By using everyday items, the presence of ninjas would not come to light even if the traps were discovered.

It was all very carefully set up that way, showing this was professional work.

That white land was currently being defending by…

(Taganuma Yukizasa.)

At 12, she was the youngest of the four kunoichis at the center of the Stonewalls. She was supposedly an expert at combat in cramped or dark areas thanks to her short height and short limbs.

Her ninja outfit was composed of full-body carbon nanotube chainmail with one piece of cloth around her chest and another around her hips.

Yes.

The girl with semi-long hair used a combination of logical combat and techniques that used her undeveloped body to create an opening.

Her ninja weapon was known as a Beak.

Synthetic rope was wrapped around the butt end of a mountain climbing ice axe to create something similar to a kusarigama. She could move in close and swing it down at her enemy or she could use the rope to swing the weapon around in an irregular fashion, catching at a target’s clothing and keeping them from escaping.

(And she could have it poisoned.)

Altering the type and concentration of poison, she could cause paralysis, pain, delirium, fainting, and even death. It was an exceedingly dangerous weapon that could strike like a scorpion or a spider.

But wait.

If Yukizasa was a kunoichi hidden in the shadows of history, how did Sugiyado know exactly what she looked like? They might have gotten a photo of her face from New Sapporo Castle’s server room, but that would not have told him that the young ninja with semi-long hair used a Beak or wore a chainmail ninja outfit.

The answer was simple.

“There, that’s a good girl. Just go limp and let the darkness take you.”

He snuck up on her from behind.

Sugiyado Souha placed the back of his elbow around the young girl’s slender neck and dragged her into a back alley before using his legs to restrain her torso and arms like a stag beetle’s mandibles.

His down jacket made a sound from the movement.

The girl’s butt had already fallen onto the unmelting snow and she was not recovering anytime soon. She might as well have fallen backwards while carrying a backpack heavier than she was.

He had used a stranglehold that applied pressure to her carotid artery rather than her windpipe.

That would knock someone out in a dozen seconds or so no matter how much they trained or what their lung capacity was.

“––––––”

There was no scream.

She could not escape the pressure, like she was being strangled by the shoulder strap of her own backpack.

She tried to reach a small hand toward a tripwire nearby – perhaps hoping the blast-resistance of her ninja outfit would save her – but she could not attempt a recovery with the explosive trap because his legs were pinning her arms in place.

She clenched her teeth in a desperate attempt to avoid foaming at the mouth and she finally went limp once her adorable eyes rolled back in her head. There was no dignity there. The irregular twitching of the 12-year-old’s young body was no more than convulsions, not conscious actions.

Silver ponytail Hoozuki approached with feet crunching through the white snow and she put an exasperated hand on her hip.

“Sensei, you’re a little too good at this. You’re looking an awful lot like a teacher who loves using corporal punishment.”

“Victory is a physical phenomenon, so don’t let your emotions influence it, Hoozuki. Besides, I would have been in trouble if I tried to attack her head on. I have to throw my air pressure kunais, so we fight best at completely different ranges.”

“Please don’t ruin our secret date by lecturing me.”

He removed his arm and legs from Yukizasa’s neck and torso and let her small body fall unceremoniously to the snow. After running his hands across the minimal curves of her body to check for her possessions, he pulled an ID card, communicator, and other usable items from her pocket and tossed them to Ouka.

Then he lined up her Stonewall ninja tools on the snow: a collapsible shovel, a powerful light used to dazzle an enemy’s eyes instead of as a light source, and the Beak made from an ice axe.

“…”

“Sensei?”

Ouka tilted her head in her ninja outfit while showing no concern for the tripwire nearby.

“There’s more,” he said with a sigh.

He was not done yet. The ninja instructor looked down at his defeated foe and stuck his index finger into her mouth while she lay limp but trembling on the snow.

He ran his finger along the inside of her cheeks, scratched at her back teeth with his nail, and finally tore away and pulled out a filling.

He smiled a little.

It was the look of a soldier after successfully defusing a mine.

“Capsaicin, huh?”

“That’s what’s in chili peppers, so it’s a fairly moral choice as far as ninja drugs go.”

Bara was keeping an eye on their surroundings with her projectiles at the ready and she was familiar with poisons because she would apply various chemicals to the needles of hardened candy she fired from her coilguns.

“It’s usually used to blind an opponent, but it can also be used to help rouse you. If you want to see if it’s taken effect, you can open one of her eyelids and shine a light in her eye.”

“Thanks.”

“Heh heh hehhh. You can always count on me to spice up a secret date☆ All that’s missing now is a romantic aphrodisiac.”

Simply put, the capsaicin filling was a means of forcibly rousing the girl after half a minute or so even if she was caught by surprise and knocked unconscious.

Once her opponent relaxed, assuming she had been neutralized, she could stab them in the back before the giddiness of victory had even worn off. Ninjas did not aim for an undefeated record. They would turn themselves into zombies if it would give them the win in the end.

“Neat, so is it like the Cicada Spray?” said theory-loving Asagao. “I’d heard other schools have something similar.”

“Huh? Cicada?” asked practical Hoozuki who could bring down an armored truck or attack helicopter using her Countless Calamities off-road motorcycle that she could transform into a shuriken launcher or wield as a giant axe similar to a circular saw.

The difference in knowledge there may have come from their difference in individual combat skill. In other words, Asagao was always searching for information because she lacked confidence.

In that case, Hoozuki was the one in trouble. A ninja obviously needed to know their enemy’s weaknesses, but they also needed to know their enemy’s strengths so they could use those to create an opening. Feeling doubt to the point of paranoia was a problem, but the opposite end of the spectrum was arrogance. They needed to strike a balance. Sugiyado made a mental note to give them a refresher on that topic once he had a chance.

Assuming you were, and would always be, the strongest was toxic.

Sugiyado himself had broken his legs and back and been forced to retire after repeatedly pushing himself more and more because he thought he could go “just a little further”.

At any rate, Asagao let out some visible breaths as she laughed in a way too wicked for someone of her age.

“At least it’s only similar. With the real one, if you have a few seconds before passing out, you relax all of your muscles to let everything out. Ammonia is an ingredient in smelling salts, you see.”

That explained the Cicada Spray name.

“I notice you didn’t specify what you’re letting out of where.” Sugiyado sounded impressed. “You’ve matured since I last saw you, Lady Asagao.”

“Sensei, teasing me by drawing attention to it doesn’t seem very nice.”

That was because she had gotten sidetracked on that bizarre topic for no good reason. Bara knew a lot about chemicals and she had only placed a hand on her cheek and sighed. A true lady would know the answer but refrain from giving it. Asagao tearfully scowled at him, so she needed to study up on etiquette a bit more.

Restraining the unconscious kunoichi was simple enough.

Most kunoichis wore ninja outfits made from thin but sturdy materials to help them against bigger or more numerous opponents, so no special ropes or handcuffs were necessary. Pinching the cloth together and tying it like that would “connect” their limbs, torso, and other movable parts, transforming their outfits into inescapable straightjackets.

“I have a question for you four. Is Yukizasa the seduction type?”

“Sensei, don’t you think her body needs to develop a lot more before she can do that?”

Bara crossed her arms to intentionally lift up her large chest inside her oiran-style ninja outfit. That provoked a reaction out of baggy-sleeved Asagao.

“I can charm you just as well as Bara, Sensei! Boobs aren’t anything. Mh, you don’t believe me, do you? I’ll be visiting you tonight, so I hope you’re ready!!”

“What do you think, Sensei?” asked Ouka.

“Probably not,” he replied.

He had only asked them to help him work through his unorganized thoughts.

He continued while making sure to avoid stepping on a handmade bear trap made by breaking apart a commercial lawnmower to expose the thick blades and then burying it in the artificial snow.

“She probably does use her exposed figure to distract her opponent’s thoughts in combat, but no more than that. A ninja who uses full-on seduction would change her tune once she was at a disadvantage, but she showed no sign of that even as she passed out.”

A ninja outfit designed for sex appeal would sometimes be given an intentional weakness to heat or a specific chemical so it could provide defense but also break away on command, but Yukizasa’s was made of purely defensive chainmail. That was probably meant to make up for her small size as the youngest of her group, but she could not escape it once it was used to bind her. And Sugiyado was not against using the methods available to him.

He had knocked her out in an alley entrance, but he chose an even more private location for the rest.

But thanks to his damaged spine, he could not drag even a small 12-year-old around. He got Bara and Hoozuki’s help to hide the small body behind a wooden box in the narrow alley and then placed a blue tarp over her. While making sure to avoid the tripwire connected to a kerosene tank, of course.

The snow was artificial, but the unconscious girl could still freeze to death left lying in it. And waking up would not help her there since she was bound with her own ninja outfit. But her ninja outfit was designed for use in this frigid northern land. As thin as it was, it would still have an insulated design that reflected IR back at herself to preserve her body heat. She would probably be fine left here. Twintails Ouka tilted her head.

“Huh? Shouldn’t you hide her better than that?”

“She wasn’t some guard on the outskirts – she was the center of their security system. Once she stops reporting in, their alert level will go up no matter what we do, so they’ll start a search of the entire area. North New Sapporo Domain’s Teine Workshop District is their backyard, so they’ll find her no matter where we hide her, unless we chop up her corpse and bury the pieces.”

“…”

Ouka gave him an extremely harsh look that said “there are four of us and we could have that done in no time if you gave the order”, but her instructor had something else to say.

“Our presence here will be noticed no matter what, so the question is what we do then. We have everything we need: her ID card, communicator, and a set of Stonewall ninja tools. So let’s get going, Ouka. The rest of you too.”

### 5: Stroll Through the Weapons Plant

The center of New Sapporo Domain was methodically laid out like a shogi board, but this workshop area was an intricate arrangement of narrow roads with lots of one-way and no-entry signs. Not to mention the snow. Not only did it cause visitors to get lost, but certain locations could be cut off from their surroundings by several lesser-used roads.

At first glance, it was not obvious what route to take. Without the use of a satellite service, they would have stood out from their surroundings.

“Continue as planned,” whispered Sugiyado.

In their ninja outfits that perfected a combination of sex appeal and practicality, Ouka, Bara, and Hoozuki vanished upwards in the blink of an eye. They had jumped up to the single-story rooftops with some help from the layer of snow thicker than a meter below their feet. With their physical abilities boosted by the special flexible material of their ninja outfits, a jump like that was nothing. And they were not dumb enough to step on a rooftop trap and tumble back down to the ground along with a thick layer of snow.

Black-haired and white-uniformed Asagao remained on the ground, but…

“W-wait, Sensei, what am I supposed to do? I can’t fight or jump up onto the roofs even with the same equipment as them.”

“…”

“That kind look! I’m the one left behind while the rest enjoy a secret date today, aren’t I!?”

He ignored her protests. When fortunate enough to be working in a group, it was best to leave one person behind so they could respond in case of emergency.

From here on, moving swiftly was more important than blending into the crowd, so he removed his down jacket and tossed it over Asagao’s head while she puffed out her cheeks.

“You wait here. And hold onto that for me.”

“Pwah. I’m not a kitten you can leave at the pet hotel while on vacation! You can’t…you can’t placate me with…ahh, I can feel your warmth. No, I won’t let this work!”

Bara’s manic voice reached them over the radio.

“Oh ho ho! I’m going to be extra demanding today after being left out yesterday, Sensei!!”

He could have called Ekaterina or Murakami Michihiko in for support, but he did not know either of them well enough. He wanted someone he knew would be able to respond immediately.

So he trudged off through the snow on his own.

The entire area was a 5km square, but each individual workshop was smaller than a convenience store. They were all packed in tight, so there was simply not enough time to sneak into each of them to check them out. He wanted to pinpoint target the right one, but they did not know which one was the center.

“Asagao, how’s the data look?”

“Why am I stuck with a no-touching-allowed long-distance internet relationship? Boo. …Anyway, this is tricky. Data security here might be even stricter than at New Sapporo Castle.”

“Because unlike the castle, there’s no defined honmaru or server room.”

It was best to use the process of elimination at times like this.

The warehouse district had no obvious symbols of authority. There was no tenshukaku, president’s office, or other seat of power, but there was also no supercomputer, server room, or centralized manufacturing equipment. All of that had been made as parallel and distributed as possible to avoid having an obvious “giant core”.

But.

What had to be kept all in one place no matter how much they tried to distribute everything?

This northern land’s defense system had been expanded to the point that it required as much power as 10 nuclear reactors to run. No matter what system they used, that would make for one hell of a toy.

Sugiyado sensed a stir up ahead.

The roads here were narrow and labyrinthine, but he still hid himself in an alley off to the side. An old wooden board with several long nails sticking out of it was left on the ground nearby, presumably to act like a beartrap.

“…”

The combined electricity/gas/water meter on the wall nearby was displaying a warning color on its small LCD screen.

Something was wrong.

But this was not just an electrical or gas leak.

There were no sirens sounding, but that may have been borrowing the logic of submarines. Everyone in the area had been swiftly and silently notified to not give away their presence. Most likely, every worker and guard in the 5km area had received an emergency email on their mobile devices.

A few roars of engines he guessed belonged to snowmobiles passed by on the road he had just vacated. They had the light but violent roar of a chainsaw.

(That’s fine. I figured we would be detected eventually.)

This was effectively a defense weapon development base maintained by the Stonewalls, so they would have a failsafe in place. If an enemy attack was detected, they would have to go through a few steps.

For example:

1. Lock down all the major entrances and exits so no one else could get in or not.

2. Use overwhelming numbers to search out and restrain the intruders.

3. Report any human or material damage or theft and run a search for any bombs or traps that might have been set up.

And they were using as much energy as 10 nuclear reactors, so…

4. Temporarily shut down any dangerous experiments underway behind the thick walls.

No one would want to be killed by their own invention blowing up.

People’s actions were a reflection of their heart.

Blindly making waves would never end well, but if you put together a careful plan, knew where to look, and made careful observations, you could learn something from it.

That said, ninja strategies lacked a decisive blow. Ninjas sought two kinds of power: the power to put together a detailed plan and the power to adlib their way through problems.

So they generally played things by ear.

He chose to follow this route to the center since their presence had been noticed, but if their opponent had behaved differently, he would have taken a different route to his goal.

“Now, then.”

Once he heard some dogs released nearby, he climbed onto a nearby rooftop and abandoned the surface route.

Nowhere here was safe.

It never was in enemy territory.

The rooftops were also covered in a thick layer of snow. Step in the wrong spot and you would fall to the ground along with a slipping sheet and the snow on top of it. In some areas, the snow melt cables had been intentionally shorted to leave a high-voltage current for someone to unwittingly stumble across. He had to assume the traps were more dangerous in the places ordinary people would never tread.

“…”

When he took a careful look from above, he saw some guards equipped with cross-country skis that could be folded up and stored in the shin of their boots. They gave some instructions to a large dog and then moved elsewhere. They were also equipped with submachineguns that had a grip and a ski pole built in, so they were presumably meant to be fired from the hip while aiming with a laser pointer. All this equipment confirmed his suspicions that these were Stonewall ninjas.

(They may have sealed the place off, but it’s a big area. Some footprints in the snow isn’t enough to put them on alert.)

Then there was the dog. His back felt funny at 5kg and it exploded with pain at 10kg, so he would be trapped if he was pinned by a dog of that size. He needed to be careful.

They photographed his footprints.

If he wanted to avoid being caught that way, he needed to change the soles of his shoes. Plus, how he carried his weight could be used to identify him. His own legs felt weird with every step he took thanks to the extra sole and insole he was using.

That was a pain, but he looked way from his feet.

There were a surprising number of people around. Some of those were of course pursuing the intruder that had entered the strategic military research institute known as the Teine Workshop District and that had taken out On-Site Commander Taganuma Yukizasa, but there was something else going on as well.

It felt like he was seeing a scattered minority trying to escape while the majority were on the attack.

For example, he saw a teenage girl who did not look like the fighting type and he saw an old lady wearing a workshop jumpsuit. The trick to being a courier was not to be strong and tough. It was to be nondescript enough to never stand out in a crowd. In that sense, they were perfect.

Because they were not acting.

No one acted more naturally than an actual amateur. That was why careless travelers might end up with a strange plastic bag shoved in their travel bag at the airport while they were not paying attention. In the same way, these people may not have been told what it was they were carrying.

“…”

He found that much more interesting, so he spoke into the small mic hidden below his scarf.

“Ouka, Bara. I’ve marked some runners who look like amateurs to me. Cut off their escape and restrict their available routes. Hoozuki, you provide backup.”

“Will do, Sensei.”

Ouka sounded excited.

He had only climbed onto the roof to prevent the dog from following his scent and there was no completely safe place here, so he hopped down from the roof at a convenient place and then moved below the eaves. He made sure not to step on any of the makeshift caltrops made with broken bottles while he waited for a surveillance drone to pass by overhead.

“Coordinate DD32. Using ID card in 3, 2, 1…”

As Ouka made her countdown, the drone unnaturally turned back the way it had come. Just as he heard the quiet roar of a snowmobile engine on another street, several bullet-shaped objects flew from one roof to another.

“…”

Word of Yukizasa’s defeat would have reached them by now, so what would happen when Ouka used the stolen ID card? But that could be extremely useful when you wanted to put the hornet’s nest in a frenzy.

While security was focused in that direction, Sugiyado stealthily pursued the amateur girl and old woman.

(Okay.)

The more intense the defense team, the more the escape team stood out by moving in the opposite direction.

They might as well have been dunked in glow-in-the-dark paint.

They also cautiously (or fearfully) avoided the area where Ouka had used the ID card knowing it would be detected. As amateurs, they were not going to take the long way to check for anyone tailing them and they did not know how to use diversions or distractions.

But even though he could defeat amateurs like this with ease, Sugiyado did not immediately go in for the attack. He observed them from a reasonable distance to figure out where they were headed.

The answer surprised him.

“Asagao, I’d like some analysis. What is this?”

“So you can’t forget how sweet my presence is even when we’re apart? Grin, grin. Anyway, that’s officially designated as a park, but it’s effectively an empty lot since they removed all the playground equipment and banned playing there with a ball or whatever because it’s too dangerous.”

“So it’s really nothing? Not what I expected.”

The rectangular space was about half the size of a soccer field and covered in more than a meter of white snow.

The escape team had gotten here ahead of him, so where had they gone?

He had retired from active duty, but he still had the skills he had built up.

He was not about to lose sight of an amateur.

The footprints in the snow just stopped all of a sudden and there was no sign of a car or snowmobile having driven through.

They could not have been picked up by helicopter either. He would not have overlooked a hot-air balloon, flying car, or any other vehicle flying through the wide-open sky.

They must have used some other method.

This area had none of the traps made with everyday items…but that did not mean it was unimportant. They might have chosen not to lay any traps here because a normal person stepping on one could end up drawing attention to the place.

He looked down at where the footprints completely vanished.

“Wait, could it be?”

“Sensei?”

He put off answering Ouka’s question over the radio.

“Asagao, you must have already checked on the map. I want to know how deep the snow is here.”

“Since it’s artificial, you can’t use the weather maps for that. But if we can trust the laser measurement data, it’s 103cm in that area.”

“Is it really?” He had no proof of this, so he naturally grew more cautious in his wording. “Laser measurements are taken by sending IR down from a satellite, measuring the reflection, and comparing the result to the actual terrain. But that tells you more than just the altitude. You can combine the results to give yourself an accurate 3D diagram, similar to lining up gourd slices.”

“What’s your point, Sensei?” asked Asagao.

“But that only works when no one messes with the process. If someone sets up shiny mirrors or black carbon pigments that absorb any wavelength, the results will come back wrong. Then what about this place? The entire place is covered with unnatural artificial snow.”

“Oh.”

“The Stonewalls have been raising the land little by little while changing the reflectivity of the artificial snow so the satellite’s laser measurements won’t notice. The environmental defense policy lets them keep this snow out here year round, so no one would even notice if the ground below the hardened snow had been lifted, even by more than a meter. Or if the space below had been dug out to create a giant igloo or cave.”

“So is that park itself a giant lab?” gasped Bara over the radio.

“B-but wait a second, Sensei,” cut in Ouka. “We don’t know the scope of their experiment, but aren’t they ultimately trying to build a medium that can produce more energy than 10 nuclear reactors? You’re only talking about snow and ice. I doubt that could physically shield against an emergency!”

She had a point.

Or she would have if this snow had fallen from the sky and the ice had frozen on a lake.

“They used a special plastic,” he bluntly stated. “Something like polystyrene. It’s harder than metal and extremely light, so I bet they hid it below the snow.”

“You’re kidding, right? We’re talking about a lab that manages more energy than 10 nuclear reactors. I don’t know how much they built up the area using the snow, but you would need dozens of meters of that special plastic to create a physical barrier capable of preventing disaster!”

“What if it could change shape to redirect impacts, just like your ninja outfits do?”

That idea overturned the idea of heavy armor or a solid fortress.

But it was not a crazy idea.

They could do it here.

“They use an emulsion. Water and oil tend not to mix, but with a surfactant, they will appear to behave like a single mixed liquid. That was used to create the polystyrene plastics.”

“But doesn’t that end once it hardens?” asked Bara. “I doubt that would provide the muscle-like flexibility you’re talking about.”

“It hasn’t hardened.”

“Then how is it any different from a gooey adhesive?” asked Asagao.

He smiled a little at that.

Preconceptions were hard to shake.

“With an emulsion, Particle A and Particle B might appear to mix together, but they never actually combine and become a different substance. It’s more like B slips into the gaps between A. But if you mess with the water molecules filling that space, A and B will behave very differently. Did you forget, Bara? And Asagao too? New Sapporo Domain has the perfect toy for this.”

“Oh,” he heard Asagao say over the radio.

He nodded.

“The slow-melting artificial snow, which you can see all around you. That snow has clearly been altered in some way since it doesn’t melt at ordinary temperatures. If they combined that with the high-polymer water-absorbing gel used in your ninja outfits, then it’s doable. By controlling the water molecules that act as the solidifying core, they can create a new plastic that freely switches between rigid and flexible.”

The usual assumptions of construction did not apply here.

What should harden, did not. And what had supposedly hardened would ignore the usual rules by growing soft once more.

Ninja outfits were so thin they had more or less become a part of the wearer’s skin, yet they could hold back the force of a bullet. In the same way, a decently thick layer of this plastic could be placed over the lab to eliminate the risks presented by an accident.

Because…

“…”

A heavy rumbling reached him.

He slowly turned around to see a gray giant had partially crushed the roof of a small workshop across the road.

They already had it working at a military level.

This cutting-edge fighter was made by strengthening a slender girl’s body, with a focus on the arms and legs, and simply giving her thicker armor. A smooth mass of fine-tuned plastic stood over three meters tall.

It produced a sound like a pressure cooker or locomotive, so it may have used steam power.

Destroying the building’s roof seemed to have set off a few traps using tripwires or electrodes. Explosions and sparks from high-voltage lines scattered around, but the giant did not seem to care. Nor had she taken any noticeable damage.

The smooth surface gave off an unnatural rainbow light similar to a soap bubble or the surface of a movie disk. The unique structure was probably refracting the light. From the look of that, simple explosions would be useless and even a warship’s laser beam would only melt the surface a little while most of its power was deflected away.

This next-gen powered suit determined the behavior of an emulsion by messing with the core of water molecules that decided how hard the special plastic would be. Part of that likely used the same high-polymer water-absorbing gel found in the kunoichis’ ninja outfits.

If so, it could do more than just protect against bullets and explosions in combat. By adjusting its flexibility on command, it could also boost the wearer’s physical abilities.

Something was staring at Sugiyado from the center of the gray.

“Found you.”

It was Taganuma Yukizasa.

That youngest of the Stonewall elites used the humiliation burning inside her to get her murderous internal combustion engine running.

He had saved her life.

He had let her live when he could have killed her.

But she apparently had too much pride to view it that way.

Instead, his failure to finish her off only inspired more anger and humiliation over her defeat. The young kunoichi bit her lip and then gave a roar as if releasing all of the emotions built up inside her.

“I’ve found the intruder!!”

### 6: The Stonewalls in their Element

Now that their eyes had met, there was no peaceful route out of this. Mutual understanding was generally presented as a beautiful thing, but not so in the ninja world. Understanding was meant to be a one-way thing. You never sat at the same table and any location containing two ninjas of different affiliations was known as a battlefield.

But before they got started, Sugiyado made sure to say one thing using the small mic on the inside of his scarf. While making sure the scarf would keep her from reading his lips.

“Change of plans. Ouka, you infiltrate the depths of the park. You can find the entrance and do that, can’t you? Hoozuki, you support her. I’ve already been spotted by Yukizasa, so I’ll draw her away along with as many other enemy troops as I can. That should give you more room to work, but make sure you don’t get caught while I draw them away.”

“Sensei, what should I do?” asked Bara.

“I hate to ask this, but could you support me? But you haven’t been spotted yet, so use your hair coilguns. Load your heavy Tatami Needles and focus on sniping from a safe distance while staying on the move. You’re the best one for that job.”

“Yes! A personal request for a one-on-one secret date!! Joint work with Sensei☆”

“Tch. That sounds way more fun,” complained Ouka.

He heard the heavy sound of someone jumping. Heavily-equipped Yukizasa had jumped toward him, crushing a small workshop’s roof in the process. She was not just landing near him. She intended to crush him with her weight. If that was a mass of pure plastic, it would weigh 500kg, making it about the same as a light car. And if it was also bulletproof and blast-resistant, then it would probably weigh even more.

“!?”

He reflexively drew two air-pressure kunais from the bottom of his short-sleeve dress shirt, but that was not going to accomplish much. Even if he killed Yukizasa at the core, the plastic armor would still crush him. The moment she landed was his biggest opportunity, but he could only use that to roll out of the way. After that, he left the park and ran into the labyrinthine streets.

She did not seem bothered by this.

She must not have expected to actually kill him with the first move. She showed no real surprise and pursued him like nothing had changed. She approached with the intensity of construction machinery. She tripped more and more of their own wires and IR beams, stepped on lawnmower beartraps and glass shard caltrops, and triggered all sorts of explosions.

If she caught up to him, he was done for. He could not escape a rush from those massive fists.

Taganuma Yukizasa was an expert at fighting in closed and dark places.

That stance remained unchanged. If he was not confident in his ability to emerge victorious after grappling with those wrecking ball arms, he had to avoid engaging her in high-speed infighting.

Besides, defeating her was not his goal.

His goal was to investigate what was hidden in the Teine Workshop District and destroy it if necessary.

This battle was unnecessary and he would gain nothing by insisting on victory at the cost of his own life.

“But she isn’t going to let me go either.”

“Why the hell would I? I don’t know who you are, but you’re telling me everything. While I smash your body beyond recognition, one piece at a time!!”

Her killer intent hit him like a physical blow.

Blatant threats had a way of making people flinch, but that did not work against trained ninjas.

Her giant gray powered suit was made from a miraculous plastic created by messing with water molecules. It had an average range of between two and three meters. Sugiyado had to continually fall back to stay out of that range, but no matter how persistently she moved that giant body toward him, she could not reach him. Given the size of the suit, she should have been able to just reach out and grab him at this range.

“Shh!!”

He threw a Fierce Fang air pressure kunai from close enough range that it was more like stabbing with a spear than launching a projectile. The instant nitrogen foam contained in the grip converted it into a tool that harnessed a maximum of 15 tons of force to pry open even a tank’s hatch if the tip was stabbed into the crack. However…

“That ain’t gonna work!” she roared.

Her powerful arm flew through the air and caught a nearby wall along the way. The storm of rubble altered the air pressure kunai’s path.

Just then, he heard a dull thud and the 3m giant tilted to the side. It was a lot like a bat had been swung into the side of her head, but yet again…

“Wow, that thing’s solid!!”

(Not even Bara’s Tatami Needle can get through? But that’s a depleted uranium alloy!!)

A second and third shot hit Yukizasa, but they were equally ineffective.

The impacts themselves were reaching the girl.

But that suit was made from a special transformable plastic, so she may have prepared bags of resupply pellets and hidden them in the snow around here. It was no problem for her if the suit took damage.

(Which means…)

Retrieving every trace of his projectiles would have to come later. He memorized the amount and location and then fell back. His goal was to draw the enemy away and create an opening for Ouka or Hoozuki to safely and successfully sneak into the secret base, but that would all fall apart if he was taken out here. He had ordered them to infiltrate that place, so he had to assist in their escape as well.

“What the hell!? What school are you from? Tell me, cause this isn’t making any damn sense. I’m getting answers here even if I have to crush your bones and squash your flesh until you’re nothing but goop inside!!”

Yukizasa shouted angrily and violently swung her artificially long arms. That kind of yelling was not very ninja-like, but it may have been an intentional switch she threw. Anger kept people from thinking logically, but that made their actions harder to predict.

Close-quarters combat required reading your opponent with lighting speed. If you wanted to be aware of the danger you faced while also spicing things up a bit, powerful emotions could do the trick. Of course, that was a high-risk, high-return doubled-edged sword. It relied on offense being the greatest defense. The idea was to take some hits in order to defeat your opponent before they could defeat you.

“Not bad for someone so tiny.”

“Shut the hell up!”

Just as her anger burned even hotter, he heard the chainsaw-like rumbling of a light engine. It was leaving the large park(?) and returning to the labyrinthine workshop district, but it came from overhead.

It was a snowmobile.

Several of the vehicle were leaping from one snow-covered rooftop to another and they were unsurprisingly driven by the Stonewalls who protected this disguised strategic military research institute (and who Princess Karin had turned into her own private force).

“This is our backyard.”

The snowmobiles generally carried two.

One was driving and the other was wielding a firearm.

“Don’t assume you can escape after messing with us. Time is on our side. We just have to call in more and more reinforcements to cut off every avenue of escape. Just like tearing off a bugs legs one by one!!”

The snowmobiles crisscrossed overhead like they were knitting wool, but after instantly noting their equipment and locations, Sugiyado grinned boldly.

“Bara, load a Tatami Needle and attack the snowmobile carrying an anti-tank rocket.”

With a thud, one of the land vehicles rotated unnaturally as it soared through the air between rooftops. The gunner in the rear seat had been trying to fire an explosive on fleeing Sugiyado to damage him even if the shot was not perfect, but the extra rotation caused their aim to veer way off.

“Yes, Sensei,” said Bara’s cheerful voice in his earpiece. “You really know how to ask a girl for a favor☆”

The anti-tank rocket’s aim shifted from Sugiyado Souha to Taganuma Yukizasa as she pursued him.

“You dumb-!?”

The small kunoichi’s protest was cut off by the rocket hitting and detonating.

Rockets were general-use weapons, but they had originally been designed to break through a tank’s armor. Not even that gray powered suit would escape this unscathed.

Sugiyado was close enough to be blown backwards by the blast, but Yukizasa had taken the brunt of it.

This was an away game for him, but that was not reason to be shy. He had to think of it as a chance to fight in a way he could not on his home field.

If he was short on firepower, he only had to borrow some from his opponent. Ninjas usually traveled light and tended not to have much firepower, so using the confusion of the battlefield to cause friendly fire among the enemy was a standard method.

The gray powered suit fell onto its back while armor shards scattered everywhere.

It triggered a few of their own traps as it fell, so some smaller explosions followed.

“Go to…hell!”

But.

It ended about how Sugiyado had expected it to.

The breaking of the armor must have kept the destructive force from reaching the human body within because the young kunoichi got up from the snow while still wielding that giant body even as it fell apart.

This was not over.

She could still move.

“Go to hell, you intruderrrrrrs!!”

She really did seem to have supply materials hidden in the snow because the holes in the thick gray armor were filled back in as if the nearby snow and ice itself were being absorbed.

Sugiyado stayed calm and swung his right hand.

He threw a Fierce Fang, lodging the weapon inside the special plastic as it repaired itself.

It landed in the very center of her flat chest.

“Uh!?”

“Be warned: that isn’t a normal kunai.”

He would have a hard time retrieving that projectile once it was absorbed within that strange plastic device, but the air pressure kunai was a ninja tool he had developed on his own after retiring and he had never registered it with the Shogunate. Unlike active duty ninjas like Ouka or Bara, they could not reveal his identity by searching the weapon in a database. He had managed to keep that tool hidden during his unofficial trial after the previous incident.

“I’m sure your ninja outfit inside that thing is bulletproof and blast-resistant, but can it rival a tank’s armor? If not, I would recommend not testing it. Once it bursts, your broken ribs will shred your lungs.”

“…”

He heard the sounds of several people kicking off the snow.

He was now surrounded by ski troops and snowmobiles on the rooftops. The gunners in the back seats were aiming submachineguns or semi-auto sniper rifles his way, but he did not seem to mind.

“I don’t care either way.”

He twirled another Fierce Fang in his hand.

It looked like he was holding a serious negotiation, but that was an illusion. He was buying time. So he wanted to force as humiliating a choice as possible onto the kunoichi and while she was in front of so many of her subordinates. That way he could keep her from making the choice right away.

“Will you give up and let me through, or will you recklessly challenge me and lose your life? I will be walking through here either way. The question is how alive you will be when I do so. The choice is yours.”

“Sensei, I’m in.”

Ouka’s voice reached him over his earpiece, so he made an estimate of how much more time he would have to buy. She was inside, so that just left searching the interior of the facility and then escaping. Just like in a video game, these things were most difficult the first time through. Everything went much faster during a replay when you already knew where to go.

Yukizasa bit her lip in front of him.

But she was unable to repair her gray armor any further.

She glanced up at her subordinates on the roofs.

She shut her eyes, sighed, and finally made up her mind. Would she live or die? There was only one possible choice.

“Okay, I’ll-”

“You will do nothing of the sort. No Stonewall would make that choice.”

A carefree voice cut her off from overhead.

It came from even higher up than the ski troops and snowmobiles on the trap-covered rooftops.

(Oh, no!)

“Yukizasa!!”

Sugiyado Souha shouted a warning, but the girl herself was only staring up in puzzlement.

Then, with a blast of explosives, a hail of metal skewers rained down from directly above. The projectiles were so numerous they covered an entire area like a falling spiked ceiling, leaving the target nowhere to run.

There was no scream.

Only the high-pitched shattering of the thick plastic armor.

The young ninja lay collapsed on the white snow.

That had come from a large axe made from bundles of small wires. The blade was covered with tightly-packed bundles of metal like a toothbrush, so when they were detonated from within, they would transform into countless sharp projectiles.

This was one of the Stonewall elites.

Which of those kunoichis had specialized in the use of explosives from a medicinal and chemical perspective, with a specialty in mine blasting?

“Horisato Oume!?”

(But our intel said they guarded Teine one at a time on a rotation!?)

Sugiyado analyzed the situation as calmly as he could manage while Oume easily landed on the snowy road.

Did they randomize even their security system itself?

That sounded simple enough, but thoughtlessly attempting that would only create confusion among their ranks from communication failures and the like. In the worst case, the unnecessary hierarchy of information would breed distrust among their own people. If they were doing that, they must have solid enough control over their communications to eliminate those risks. That would take considerable skill.

Oume’s long black hair was tied at the end and a sweet scent came from skin so white it seemed to be born of this snowy land.

The boy narrowed his eyes a little.

She was an explosives and blasting specialist. He could not keep the same distance he had from Yukizasa who specialized in extreme close range. Her fighting style would be entirely different.

She gave off a definite sex appeal even through her loose-fitting shrine maiden outfit. The way it was close to slipping off of her altogether suggested she was a travelling shrine maiden who journeyed across the land – as opposed to one who served a particular shrine – and who had lost her faith and ended up making a living through sex work. Of course, that was all camouflage meant to hide her identity as a kunoichi. Also, those corrupted shrine maidens had not worked in the well-maintained red light districts and brothels of the big cities. They had worked in the rural areas without such facilities – such as at a mine where many brawny men labored.

Horisato Oume.

She must have had belts wrapped around her body because, when she held her own body tight, glass cylinders emerged from the slits all over her shrine maiden outfit. How large an explosion could she cause with one of those containers no larger than a relay baton?

“We are all here for the hunt. I do wish Princess Karin would wait further inside where she is better protected, but that is a lost cause since you could say she was born for the battlefield.”

“…”

It would be wrong to blame Ouka or Asagao for the faulty intel. Information warfare was standard for ninjas. When everyone was working to deceive and infiltrate each other in lieu of trading physical blows, you were never going to escape entirely unscathed.

Perhaps Sugiyado should have realized the truth himself when he saw the heavy firepower the snowmobilers and skiers were using. People who worked in the mountains did need to know how to fire a gun to protect themselves from wild animals. They had to know how to shoot and how to avoid mistaking a person for an animal. These were the faithful subordinates trained by Oume, the explosives specialist, not of Yukizasa who specialized in closed and dark spaces.

“Sen…sei.”

“Ouka? Hoozuki?”

“I found it. I actually found it,” said Ouka. “I’ve arrived in the lab that hides their new power source deep underground, but is this…is this really what we were pursuing here?”

“We can talk later, Ouka!” said Hoozuki. “They’re coming! Is that Amamo who specializes in terrain effects!? Dammit, it really is like seeing a dragon hidden in the earth!!”

An unnatural tremor shook the ground below his feet and the snow fell from the rooftops.

It sounded like he was no the only one who had run into unexpected trouble.

“Asagao, this hasn’t gone as planned. I can handle myself, so you support those two’s escape.”

“Ksh, kssshhh!!”

“Her too!? Goddammit!”

He could not tell if Asagao was being jammed or if she had been physically attacked, but something was happening to her when she was supposedly outside the battlefield. Princess Karin’s Stonewalls had a longer reach than he had expected. His group had thought they were sneaking in relatively undetected, but the tables had been turned in no time. He could not let this continue. If he just let time pass, he would only be allowing true tragedy to strike.

“What do we do, Sensei!?”

(So Bara’s fine.)

She could directly fight using her Serpent Monster hair coilguns or she could ensnare people with her sex appeal and disguises. Having her meant a lot.

There was no such thing as safety or a sure thing on a ninja battlefield. Every step of the way, you had to tap the stone bridge ahead of you to see if it remained solid. So when things did not go according to plan, you had to use your best guesses based on experience. He had to work out where the greatest risk lay and who he could save to set off a chain reaction that would ultimately get them back on their feet.

He could only make one move.

Everyone’s future would be determined by where he chose to move Bara who would be a rook or bishop in shogi terms. If he chose poorly, he could have his piece taken, leading to their utter defeat.

“…”

He had to choose now.

And Sugiyado Souha gave a clear order in front of the enemy.

“Bara, go into hiding. Don’t touch anyone.”

The silent head tilt came from sexy Oume with her shrine maiden outfit nearly falling off of her.

“My, my, my.”

She had thoroughly trained herself to speak in a way that intentionally got under the skin of anyone listening, making them lose their cool. Wielding a blade was not the only way to fight. Even the way she swayed her body like she was waiting for a customer on the side of the snowy road was a part of her “attack”.

That was enough to tell him she was a master of direct combat and sex appeal. She was similar to Bara in that way, but still different. While Bara took control with the sweet candy, Oume took control with the lash of the whip.

“Holding someone back now? True, thoughtlessly placing a hidden piece on the board only to have it immediately taken would be the height of folly, but are you really in any position to hold back? We already have you all in checkmate. You do understand that, don’t you? I refuse to believe you don’t.”

He was surrounded by ominous metallic sounds. The guards (who were actually ninja subordinates well-trained by Oume) had stepped down from their snowmobiles and aimed their assault rifles, submachineguns, semi-auto sniper rifles, and even shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Guns were equally deadly no matter how much or little ninja training given to the person pulling the trigger.

“What option do you have but to place your sacrificial pawn on the board and make a run for it?” Oume smiled seductively. “It is either that or be turned to Swiss cheese.”

“That’s what you want me to do.” Sugiyado did not hide his vicious smile. “You detected our actions and moved in ahead of us. I’m not ashamed of falling for a trap if it took all of the Stonewall elites, including Princess Karin herself. …But even after all that, you missed one. You needed to get rid of us all, but you failed. So you’re trying really hard to make up for that, but it won’t change a thing. Our shark has dived below the waves. And you can’t rest easy as long as even one of us is still free.”

“…”

Don’t let her rattle you.

Ouka and Hoozuki had only encountered a powerful foe. The battle was not over yet. Amamo’s skill was an unknown, but it was two-against-one.

He had lost contact with Asagao, but that did not mean she had been physically eliminated. It would be easy to set this up by jamming all of the radio frequencies they were using.

And Bara remained entirely outside the Stonewalls’ field of view.

This attack had left a major impact, but that was no reason to act rashly. He could not let Oume lead him astray when they were not losing yet.

The ones actually sweating bullets here were the Stonewalls after their attack with all four of them had failed to achieve the desired results.

“And you can’t shut down the entire fishing grounds, so you’re stuck. You were trying to rattle us with lies, but maybe you should have waited a while longer before purging Yukizasa.”

“My people will use their bullets to shred your body starting from the hands and feet and working inwards. Then it won’t be long before your companion disobeys your orders and comes running. Once we have drawn out your last hidden fighter, our checkmate will be complete.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do that.” Sugiyado slowly spun the air pressure kunai in his hand. “And what makes you think my plan was to run away?”

He threw something down at his feet and white powder spread out across the entire area.

“Wha-!?”

Oume’s eyes widened, but it was already too late.

Snow covered everything here and that Fierce Fang was a special ninja tool that could create 15 tons of force using an instant nitrogen foam more powerful than an airbag. By removing the foam cartridge and throwing it against the ground, he could block their view with snow.

All it did was blind them.

It was an alternate form of the dramatic smokescreen.

But…

(If they can’t see, they can’t fire their guns no matter how much I’m surrounded. Those subordinates will be too afraid of accidentally hitting their commander to do anything.)

Even the classics had their uses.

Sometimes a threat not found in the good, old days became an oddly perfect match. This workshop district was covered in countless traps made with everyday items, but he had discovered that there were almost none on the main roads. Otherwise the ordinary people passing through would get hit.

And Sugiyado Souha had hinted to Oume that he did not plan to run away.

“Shh!!”

“!?”

He took off running.

This was the exact opposite of when he was fighting Taganuma Yukizasa earlier. The safest place in this case was right up in front of the sexy traveling shrine maiden. That would prevent the guards from firing on him for fear of hitting their commander and it would prevent Oume from using her own explosives and blasting. No one would want to be blown away by their own bomb.

However.

He also could not hope for any support from the long-distance coilguns.

This was entirely reliant on his own skill now.

It was one-on-one.

He tore through the thick curtain of pure white to approach Horisato Oume. He of course held an air pressure kunai in each hand.

“Really!?”

Oume jumped back a few steps and swung a few glass cylinders the size of relay batons. But not to ignite them.

Explosives were a type of chemical.

By mixing several of them together in the right quantities, they could become a chemical with an entirely different effect.

For example, a poison gas that had already begun destroying the red blood cells flowing through your blood vessels by the time you sensed its sweet scent.

However.

Once again…

“It…didn’t work!?”

Instead of using another air pressure kunai, he swung around his long scarf. The clothing swelled out with air and captured the floating white snow.

The snowflakes mixed with the air caught the makeshift poison gas and dropped it to the ground.

Sexy Oume’s eyes widened.

“Was that a variation on the Rain Puddle!?”

“A poison spray made from toxic plants or jellyfish tentacles won’t work on a rainy or humid day.”

Once he had neutralized her thick poison gas barrier, the rest was easy. He detonated another instant nitrogen foam cartridge at his feet, slid badly-injured Yukizasa to the right side of the road, and continued toward his real enemy. He arrived dangerously close for someone who specialized in explosives and firearms.

He held an air pressure kunai in each hand and their tips rushed in toward Horisato Oume of the Stonewalls!!

“Tch!!”

Oume must not have had any other choice at this point. she beat at the air with her baggy sleeves to spread them out and twirled her entire body around.

The movement was as beautiful and light as a dance dedicated to a god.

But.

The air pressure kunais’ tips were pushed back with a sound much too violent and distorted for such a dance. Her circular motion carried the weight and edge of a guillotine. From his perspective, her shrine maiden sleeve had hardened as it grew gray and petrified. It transformed into a dull blade much like a rusty axe blade.

(Stone dust!?)

That was originally a fire extinguishing powder sprinkled around in a mine to stop a dust explosion chain reaction. Oume readily used explosives in closed spaces and indoors, so it made sense for her to carry some around for protection. And Sugiyado had heard it could harden and lose all effectiveness if it absorbed the moisture from the air.

This was not its intended use.

She had been caught in a bind when his snow smokescreen kept her subordinates from using their guns and then neutralized her poison gas with his Rain Puddle ninja technique. But she had instantly turned the tables on him with this new idea. She had the flexible thoughts and the powerful drive to take advantage of any accidents and of her enemy’s attacks. That girl in a shrine maiden outfit really was skilled.

“!!”

It was now Sugiyado’s turn to move himself out of the way.

Her large sleeves spun around with a circular motion based on the movement of her arms and torso. He responded like he was being attacked by metal balls attached to short chains. A single hit here would easily shatter human bone.

(That isn’t her only weapon. Just like a bayonet, the point is to hold back any enemies that get too close. If I keep my distance, she’ll start using the artillery and explosives she specializes in!!)

If he could stab in just the tip of his Fierce Fang, the door-opening power would force the crack open. Its 15 tons of force was enough to pry open a tank’s hatch.

But he could not use that force without first stabbing the weapon into the target.

(In that case.)

He struck with his right kunai.

He doubted his first strike would kill. He expected her petrified sleeve to deflect it, so he used that momentum to twirl around. He built up speed as if for a roundhouse kick and made a horizontal strike with his left kunai.

“It’s no use!!”

She was using an improvised weapon and she seemed to be only barely holding him back, but he was not trying to increase the kunai’s piercing power.

He struck at the air.

Several snowflakes reached the left kunai’s surface and the frictional heat melted them.

He made sure they were refreezing when he clashed with Oume.

What would happen then?

He did not need to stab the Fierce Fang into her.

Not if he used the ice like glue to attach the kunai to hit.

“Ah!?” she groaned.

His air pressure kunai sprang open and shattered Oume’s petrified sleeve from within. He did not give her time to create an additional blade. She was leaning back with her large chest jiggling, so before she could straighten back up and recover, he flipped his right kunai around and slammed the butt of the grip against her temple.

There was no obvious scream.

The traveling shrine maiden collapsed to the snow with her limbs irregular convulsing. She did not appear conscious, but it would be best to tie her up.

That was Yukizasa and Oume.

Two of the central Stonewalls had been taken out, but this was not over yet.

The snow smokescreen was a temporary thing. The armed Stonewall subordinates were still surrounding him on cross-country skis and snowmobiles.

He had to take his next action before that white cover vanished.

(Now, then.)

“Ouka, Hoozuki. I’ve cleaned things up here. Two defeated, no damage. If you’ve found anything, take it back with you. I’ll keep the guards as busy as I can to create more of an opening, so as long as you’re careful which direction you escape in-”

“Pant, pant.”

“Hoozuki?”

“I’m sorry, Sensei.”

“I need an actual report, Hoozuki. What happened!?”

He had to consciously suppress the unease rapidly filling him.

However.

“Oh? You should really be praising her for getting away at all, insolent fool.”

That was not Hoozuki’s voice.

And it came on a different channel. The transmission was not from her radio.

This was from the small radio Ouka had been using.

(Is there anything I can do right now!?)

This turn for the worse meant he could not allow things to get even worse or to fall any further behind. At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He could not even drag Yukizasa or Oume into an alley. He instead dumped snow over them to hide them from view and then hid himself in the trap-filled alley. That was easier said than done since it required slipping past the 20-30 people surrounding him. If they noticed anything off at all, they would immediately fire on him, but his heartrate remained calm.

“Is that Princess Karin?”

The wind blew through.

The white snow was swept from the air, bringing danger back to the road.

Sugiyado observed things from the back alley while listening to the villain over the radio.

“It was Amamo who took her out, but I am willing to accept the honor myself as the Stonewall leader.”

“…”

One of his beloved students had fallen into enemy hands.

He could not change what had already happened, but he checked over what options he had available to him and considered how to best use those options. He had no time. Burning anger welled up from the pit of his stomach, but his thoughts also raced with tremendous speed.

“I have Yukizasa and Oume.”

“You have two replaceable pawns.”

“Yeah, I’d say the same thing in your position. You could comb this area and never find your precious companions. They’ve been taken from you, so you have no choice but to change your focus and say that. If you admit how much those captured girls mean to you, who knows what kind of brutal torture you’d find in the video footage sent to you. So you can never reveal how you really feel. Especially when it comes to hostages.”

“Insolent fool.”

“Only a special few can be trusted to truly watch your back, right? I understand that all too well. We’re in the same situation here, but the numbers are different. I have two. I can play the ‘kill one’ card and still have one left over, so torture and execution are both on the table for me.”

He could not physically reach her, but he still had to take the initiative.

He would use threats, persuasion, conflict, compromise, confusion, sudden outbursts, and anything else that might help. He would use every lie and truth he could to bind Princess Karin who was out of his reach. Because allowing her to move a single fingertip just one millimeter would permanently scar Ouka.

They could call him a demon if they liked.

The time had come to let his soul burn.

“…”

His surroundings were growing noisy.

Snow ninjas on skis and snowmobiles were rushing around.

From their perspective, Sugiyado, Oume, and Yukizasa had entirely disappeared from their encirclement, so of course they were as frenzied as a hornet’s nest.

But this created an opportunity for the boy who had buried the two kunoichis in the snow on the street. He would wait where he was until he had a chance to dig them up. Ideally, he would get that done before they released the dogs.

He whispered into his radio without revealing any of that.

“Let’s hold a hostage exchange.”

“Why would I want to do that? I need to know who you people are, so my first job is to squeeze as much information out of this kunoichi as I can get.”

“If you aren’t going to take this seriously, then I will play my most effective card right away. Let’s see if you change your tune after you find one of these girls dead on the side of the road. Would you prefer it be Yukizasa or Oume?”

“Do not forget that this girl is still effective as a hostage even if I cannot kill her. She might be a kunoichi, but she has her limits. I have been trained as a Stonewall, so I am aware what line I must cross to have her beg for death instead.”

Sugiyado clenched his teeth hard enough to make a noise, but he knew he could not let her know.

“Don’t destroy that radio,” he said. “I’ll contact you with further instructions later.”

“And you treat your two guests with care. Those cards you hold are quite literally your last hope.”

She ended the transmission first.

It was a small thing, but he clicked his tongue while hiding in the alley. He had successfully restricted her actions, but she had left the greater impression in the very end. The way she talked hinted at the merciless violence that women could exact on each other. He wondered if he should have similarly hinted at some of the scummy things that men could do to women.

At any rate…

“Bara, come to me. I hate leaving the heavy lifting to you, but I need you to dig up the two hostages and carry them. There are no soldiers around anymore, but get it done before their dogs can sniff us out. I’ll take the lead and clear the way.”

“Understood.”

“Hoozuki, you support her once you catch up. Don’t bother attacking. Collect my dropped kunais and Bara’s Tatami Needles at the locations we provide you.”

“Sensei, I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

She had no reason to apologize like this.

She and Ouka were both Elite Ninjas of the Shogunate, so if they had worked together and still been defeated, it was not because they had done anything wrong. And unlike Bara, who used her coilguns to give her a way to fight outside of disguises and chemicals, Ouka specialized in direct combat. Amamo the terrain effect specialist was just absurdly powerful. As the commander of this mission, Sugiyado could only conclude he had erred in their distribution of forces.

This was his responsibility, so he would make it right.

(I just have to deal with one thing at a time.)

Step one was leaving the Teine Workshop District now that they were done here.

Based on what Princess Karin had said, only Ouka had fallen into her hands, but he still wanted to regroup with Asagao and confirm she was all right.

Then he could have Hoozuki share whatever she had discovered about the new energy source in the lab.

And…

(I need to influence Princess Karin using Yukizasa and Oume so I can get Ouka back unharmed.)

He could guess that Princess Karin was thinking the exact same thing. They essentially had a blade pressed against each other’s throat. In a way, they would understand each other even better than some friends.

He covered his mouth with his scarf and silently gathered his resolve.

(I will get her back unharmed. No matter what it takes.)

Eventually, a single ski soldier returned after searching the surrounding area and peered into the gap between the two buildings.

But he did not notice anything amiss.

Because there were no longer any footprints remaining.

## Chapter 3

### 1: The Difference Between Revenge and a Rescue Operation is Paper Thin

By the time they were safe once more, the sun had fully set.

Night had fallen.

They were inside a short-term apartment in New Sapporo Domain. It was one of the hideouts prepared by Sugiyado’s four students: Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, and Asagao.

A banner saying “Congrats on Getting Your Job Back!” was hanging unnaturally in the room.

Opening the refrigerator revealed a homemade-looking cake with plastic wrap over it.

Ouka must have prepared all of it.

The only thing missing was Ouka herself.

“…”

“…Sensei.”

Asagao softly called out to him while he sat there staring at the cake. As expected, she had not fallen into enemy hands and had merely been jammed.

His students had been calling their work here a secret date, but no longer.

(I can’t let it get to me right now.)

He had dragged the girls into his business and made a poor command decision. He really should have been committing seppuku, but that would not bring Ouka back.

So he would use his life in a different way.

He was willing to use up his life if it would save his student.

“Hoozuki. Tell me what happened.”

The silver-haired ponytail girl’s shoulders jumped.

Like he was digging into an open wound.

He wanted to punch himself in the face, but he had to ask this right now.

“What did you and Ouka see in that lab protected by such thick armor? What does Princess Karin hope will be her new energy source? And tell me about Amamo too. Tell me everything you know.”

“It was thermoelectric generation.” She spoke slowly, like she was fighting something within herself to get the words out. “They aren’t using large nuclear reactors or turbines. They’re using the electricity created in semiconductors. In a closed circuit created by pressing two different kinds of metal together, the heat difference creates electricity. In this northern land, that temperature is easy to come by when using the outside and inside air temperatures or room temperatures.”

Asagao, their gadget expert, frowned.

“But wait. By thermoelectric generation, you mean using the Seebeck effect, right? No one has ever created a macro-level generator for that. It’s true it doesn’t need gasoline or natural gas, but I thought it only produced small amounts of electricity. I mean, it can only create electricity on the circuit board.”

“Which means they only have to increase the scale.” Hoozuki hung her head. “And if they use something that already exists, they can skip the major construction fees that would rouse suspicions.”

Asagao was still not convinced.

“What are you-?”

Just as the youngest kunoichi was going to ask more, she came to a stop. She may have thought of something.

“The abandoned underground linear motor train network,” said Sugiyado with a grim look. “They were lying when they said they had filled it in with concrete.”

Linear motor trains used massive amounts of electricity, but the rails themselves were exceedingly long electric circuits lined with electromagnets. Only slight modifications would be needed to reuse them as the closed circuit for thermoelectric generation. The temperature difference would not be hard to set up if they used the difference between the closed tunnel and the outside air.

A motor and a generator were two sides of the same coin.

Even an elementary schooler would understand that after seeing a cheap light that connected to their bike’s front wheel, but running across the idea again here showed the possibility had completely slipped their minds.

Hoozuki nodded like a scolded child.

“That massive rail system connects all six of the Hokkaido Area’s domains. It covers more than 3600km…no, twice that with the up and down tracks. And the linear network hadn’t been privatized like the general railways have, so Princess Karin would have had no trouble requisitioning it with her temporary Domain Lord powers. Each individual unit is small, but when the entire system is used as a closed circuit generator, its output should easily surpass 10 nuclear reactors.”

Electric eels could produce enough electricity to kill a human in the water, but each of their individual generator organs did not produce that much. They gained that great output by connecting so many of them together in series.

One of the ninjas here could be particular about electricity and power sources since she used coilguns.

Bara lifted her large chest with her crossed arms and leaned back against the wall.

“That explains why they only needed that one lab made of snow in the middle of the workshop district. The individual units must be even simpler than a cheap calculator powered by a solar panel. New Sapporo Domain and the other northern domains must have hoped to overcome their lack of resources like this. They never would have been in this situation if they could have pumped tons of materials into building up a massive facility from scratch. They ended up modifying something they already had to make up for that.”

Anyway.

They doubted there were any problems with the new power system using the underground linear motor train network. They had to assume that Princess Karin had already restored her defense system that included everything from early-warning radars across the entire Hokkaido Area to strategic anti-air laser beam cannons and 900mm railguns. She had only been working so hard to hide it because she did not want anyone to know she had breathed life back into them.

Sugiyado sighed.

“That means she isn’t just holding them in reserve.”

“If she could take the initiative without actually using them, she would probably show them off. You know, to say ‘don’t mess with me cause I’ve got these cool new weapons’.”

He agreed with Asagao.

“Whatever she is actually planning,” said Bara. “If we assume she was hiding this information as they approached readiness, we have to assume the generation facility using the underground linear motor train network is just about complete. And if she does have her defense system back up, what is she trying to accomplish by hiding that fact? Hoozuki?”

The silver-haired ponytail girl weakly shook her head at that one. She had only seen the technology at the lab. There must not have been any documents explaining how or why it would be used.

With her arms still crossed and her back still against the wall, Bara used her chin to gesture over toward the bathroom door.

“How about we get this out of Taganuma Yukizasa and Horisato Oume, Sensei? By any means necessary.”

“Stop. I’m not leaving them in your care if you’re going to be emotional about it, Bara.”

Sugiyado made his point very clearly. They of course could not let the hostages know about that, but those two were crucial bargaining chips if they were to rescue Ouka. Carelessly harming those two and “using them up” would be the height of folly.

(I was hoping this conversation would give me some other bargaining chip to work with, but no such luck. Those generator units cover 3600km in both directions, so destroying them all is unrealistic. And I still can’t get a good grip on the conspiracy behind it all.)

He also had to make a decision about the hostage exchange to retrieve Ouka. The more time he gave Princess Karin, the more she would recover from her shock and the longer young Ouka would remain in enemy hands.

Humans did not always act in their own best interests.

Even if someone believed they were acting logically, their emotions could take control at any moment.

Taking a hostage was much easier said than done.

It affected the hostage and the hostage taker both.

After all, you had to invite an enemy into your territory, even if they were being threatened with a weapon and bound with rope or chains. Think of it like trying to get a good night’s sleep with a serial arsonist or serial killer tied up on the floor of your room. Even if your rational side could calculate out that they could not escape, could your emotional side really rest easy? The stress would be constantly building. And when you had the upper hand, it could be hard to even notice it.

“…”

With that in mind, Sugiyado made a decision. He still wanted some other bargaining chip. If Princess Karin was formulating her plans while entirely focused on Yukizasa and Oume, he could rattle her all the easier if he attacked from a different angle.

So…

“Time to contact the Empire.”

“Running to your Cyrillic mistress again?” grumbled Asagao, so he patted her small head.

“I’m not interested in Ekaterina here. I want to contact Murakami Michihiko who we left in her care.”

“Oh.”

“That’s right, Hoozuki. Princess Karin tried to directly cajole and persuade him in the castle, so he must be important to her – maybe for a rational reason and maybe for an emotional one. That means he’ll be even more useful than Yukizasa or Oume.”

### 2: Destruction

The disconcerting straining noise sounded just like a large bundle of hair being twisted and pulled taut.

It came from synthetic construction rope colored yellow and black.

“Kh,” groaned Kuhou Ouka, the girl with her long chestnut hair in twintails, as she awoke.

The solid thunk behind her came from the collapse of the tripod that had been supporting her hips from behind. Her arms were pulled over her head, her wrists were tied together, and they were dangling from the ceiling. If she was being suspended off the floor, her wrists would have been congested too badly to move or her shoulders would have dislocated, but she was kept just low enough that she could rest on her toes if she stretched down. Keeping her in that in between state was meant to slowly wear down all her body’s muscles over the course of hours.

(Can I slip the rope? No.)

There were a few stage magic tricks to that end, but they generally required some setup before being tied up. She was helpless since she had been bound by an expert while she was unconscious.

Also, a shiver ran down her skinny back.

She did not have any sort of equipment. Her stacked-barrel hunting gun called Midnight Tempest and the rest of her ninja tools had been confiscated, but she also felt no response from the strength boost her ninja outfit was supposed to provide using its electric potential elasticity and high-polymer water-absorbing gel. That was equipped with several batteries smaller than a stick of gum, but they must have all been removed.

She had not been stripped bare while unconscious, but not as a kindness to her.

That was a defensive measure to prevent the Stonewalls from feeling unnecessary guilt while she was imprisoned here.

When one side had an advantage over the other, the psychological effects were not a one-way deal. Sometimes, the imprisoners would be influenced by a pressure of their own creation. Ouka had her direct strength, but kunoichis were also taught to make a weapon of their weaknesses like that. Of course the enemy was being cautious.

She could not escape right away, so she had to alter her focus.

“…”

Unable to protect herself, she observed her surroundings while standing on her toes.

(Where am I? The enemy base? If I can find any intel I can get back to Sensei and the others, then my capture won’t be entirely meaningless.)

She was in a small square room measuring 10m on each side. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of thick steel and, when she twisted her hips to look behind her, she saw a large door of the same material. Ducts and pipes ran along the ceiling. She was dangling down from one of those pipes and she could sense a faint vibration through the rope when she focused her senses.

(Is it a steampipe?)

The room had no windows and the fluorescent lights on the ceiling had been removed. The only light came from the large lamp in one corner. Instead of a desk lamp, this was a floor lamp standing taller than she was. Ones like that would normally be used in studios and nighttime construction sites.

(This reminds me of a current or former construction site.)

She could only guess without seeing things outside. It was even possible this was a photography studio in a skyscraper decorated to look like a construction site.

That said, it was unusual to hear absolutely nothing through the walls when she remained entirely silent. Absolute soundproofing was hard to set up and not many people could do it. That had to be a clue to where this was.

Just then, the metal door behind her opened without so much as a knock.

“Hello, miss. How are you feeling?”

She twisted around to look back at the door and focused on the view through the door before on the person who had stepped in.

However…

“There’s another door behind this one. We’re not letting you see outside this room.”

“…”

The woman of around 20 who circled in front of Ouka had long black hair swaying at her sides and dragged a gorgeous junihitoe behind her.

She was Princess Karin.

Her skin was flushed a faint pink and her black hair was glossy and shiny even while dry. A faint herbal aroma hung over her.

(Was she bathing or receiving beauty care? I guess it isn’t unusual these days to use the heat of a garbage incinerator for a spa.)

She made some guesses, but she had no way of getting any of this to Sugiyado and the others. It was frustrating.

Meanwhile, the situation was underway.

Princess Karin leaned in close to peer into the eyes of the kunoichi standing on her toes with her bound hands dangling from a rope. She was looking up from right in front of Ouka’s growing chest. That was intentional. She was trying apply pressure through the violation of personal space, just like how oppressive it felt on a packed train.

“We checked over your equipment.”

“Oh? Way to ruin the wonderful hospitality you were offering me here.”

“Act tough if you like, but we checked over all of it. Including in here.”

Princess Karin’s slender finger ran down Ouka from her flat chest and past her navel, rubbing her skin through the ninja outfit that no longer functioned but still gave off sex appeal.

“You must be a real worrier to install seven batteries in this thing.”

“Kh.”

“You hid them well, so it took a lot of ‘feeling around’ to find them all.”

That was how it must have happened.

Ouka had known that, but trained as she was, it still took a lot of effort for her to keep her teenage side from showing through.

“Now, was that search done by a woman, or by a man? Who do you think I gave the order to?”

“…”

Ouka’s expression remained unchanged.

A raging storm of embarrassed heat roiled in the core of her body, but letting that show would only invite more attacks in the same vein. The standard anti-torture strategy began with feigning indifference no matter what they did.

Princess Karin was trained in the Stonewall ninja school, so she would be familiar with the womanly techniques. She made a purr in her throat, covered her mouth with her large sleeve, and laughed in an overly elegant fashion.

“Do not worry. There are vanishingly few men who are worth inviting into a group of kunoichis who hone their sex appeal as a weapon. Most men are no more than imbeciles who end up forgetting their mission and running wild while inventing some strange story about it being ‘elopement’ or ‘challenging the world for their love’. I was so close to finally securing a useful one back at the castle when you had to intervene. The scan for hidden weapons, transmitters, and suicide pills was done by Amamo.”

It was said even the lawless pirates had avoided putting a mixed-gender crew on a single ship when possible. When working with multiple ships, they would always divide their personnel along gender lines. Needless to say, that was to avoid having the entire crew break apart from unnecessary trouble. Ouka’s group had been blessed with an extreme exception in Sugiyado Souha, but the young man named Murakami Michihiko may have been that for Princess Karin and the Stonewalls.

“But anyway.” Princess Karin looked up at the suspended girl and breathed an exasperated sigh. She was close enough for the air pressure to tickle Ouka’s flat chest. “I did not expect your tools and outfit to be so official. What are Elite Ninjas from the Shogunate doing this far north?”

“I think you know exactly why, Princess Karin.”

“Well, you can’t kill yourself like this. Despite what fiction would have you believe, humans do not die just from biting their own tongue. Are you trying to anger me into carelessly killing you?”

Princess Karin knew how the game was played. She reached into her junihitoe’s sleeve and pulled out a hairspray-sized can. Then she attached a clear plastic cup to it.

“What are you having me inhale?”

“You should really ask me to let you inhale it. While saying please, of course.”

It could simply be a gas, but it could also be bacteria or mold spores. Ouka tried to feign calm, but her eyes still wavered.

Princess Karin looked amused as she shook the metal can equipped with inhaler cup and she lightly slapped it against Ouka’s soft cheek.

“Don’t worry. It’s only oxygen. And the idea isn’t to have you inhale so much you hyperventilate.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“If I’m going to negotiate with a guy who can bring multiple Shogunate Elite Ninjas together, I need some tricks up my sleeve. I want to get Oume and Yukizasa back, but that will be no easy task. I just know he’s working up some kind of plan, so I want to lay a trap of my own. …A trap using your body and mind.” That demon in female form smiled like this was none of her concern. “Simply put, I will remake you into a puppet who can never say no. I’m sure you have done your research into New Sapporo Domain and the Stonewalls, so you might even know our identities and abilities. I doubt we could win back Yukizasa and Oume entirely unharmed now that they have been captured, but what if I had a new fighter they knew nothing about? That is exactly what I will have once you betray your companions. Those Shogunate ninjas will be satisfied once they get all of Yukizasa and Oume’s insider information, but this will catch them off guard.”

That was a horrifying thought.

She was being asked to personally kill her beloved teacher. Her body and mind would be remade until that was a real possibility. As if unseen components of her being would be removed one by one and replaced with something else entirely. She would prefer to be tortured to death in the cruelest way imaginable.

This demon understood that, but she said all this anyway.

She stood a step removed from standard morals and etiquette. She knew this was a line that must not be crossed even by a kunoichi who actively made use of taboos, but she whispered sweetly all the same.

“Yes, I can pretend to lose the negotiation and send you to him. Then, when you strike, I can use the resulting chaos to take back my companions. Now, I’ve revealed my plan to you, but you have no way of letting him know. It’s killing you inside, isn’t it!? Anyway, I would appreciate your cooperation in this. When I am done remaking you, I hope you will kill as many of your companions as possible.”

“I’ll never do that!!”

“Yes, you will. Your own intentions are irrelevant here. After all…”

Princess Karin stretched up and touched the steampipe Ouka was suspended from. Specifically, she grabbed the emergency release valve. With a loud “pshhhh!!”, something formless erupted out. It did not directly hit Ouka, but it instantly filled the sealed room. The stench of rotten eggs reached Ouka’s nose, reminding her of a hot spring.

“Hydrogen sulfide!?”

“Maybe it is and maybe that distinctive smell is being used to hide something else. Use all of your knowledge to fuel your paranoia. Now, miss, if you would like this oxygen tank, you need only ask. If you’re lucky, it won’t be too late by the time the mask is in place, but I would recommend making up your mind sooner rather than later.”

Princess Karin grinned and placed the clear cup over her own mouth and nose.

“I will be back to ask again in half an hour. I’m not interested in sitting around testing your patience.”

“…!”

“And this will continue for hours if need be. Or days. It is all up to you, so this could be the first of many half hours to come. Personally, I think I will go enjoy the rest of my massage in a room with an air purifier. Listen, I will only ask you once each visit. Enjoy feeling the toxins entering your bloodstream through your lungs.”

The first half hour was a battle with her own struggling.

She held her breath and strained her bound hands, but nothing she did improved her situation. Not breathing had never been an option. With no power left, her ninja outfit would not protect her. She felt like the unseen source of the stench was entering her through her nose, her hair, her skin, and even within her underwear.

Was this really the sulfuric chemical found at hot springs?

Could it also contain an even more brutal delirium gas or knockout gas?

Once her body could no longer resist, her mind raced and gathered up every bit of knowledge she had. It was like having her life flash before her eyes. This was her instincts trying to find any clue to breaking free of this, but her ninja training had left her with an extensive knowledge of toxins and drugs, which only made this worse. She could not have feared the possibility of certain gases and bacteria if she did not know they existed.

“How are you doing? Changed your mind yet?”

After precisely half an hour, Princess Karin reentered the room with a transparent cup over her nose and mouth.

She must have been worried that the smell would get on her junihitoe or her hair because she grimaced and closed the steampipe’s valve even though she could not have actually smelled it.

“You are a sight to behold, let me tell you. Is all that sweat just from tension? I’m sure that flesh-colored skintight suit would have maintained an interior environment between it and your skin if it still had its batteries, but you look like you just ran a marathon. Sweat is seeping from the cracks in the suit and…I kindly left your underwear intact, but it might as well not be there anymore.”

She took a deep and performative breath of fresh oxygen and the sound of gas leaving the metal cannister wore on Ouka’s nerves.

“Just say the word and you will be immediately freed from this physical exhaustion and mental fear.”

“I will never do that.”

“Another half hour it is.”

The next half hour was a battle with flashbacks.

As all the “what ifs”, maybes, and hypotheticals swirled through her mind over and over, her knowledge ended up running in an unusual direction. It may have been similar to getting lost reading manga or a magazine found while rearranging your room. Or maybe her instincts concluded there was no point in continuing the vain search through the direct genres of toxins and drugs, so they ended up reaching for a different genre of technique and memories.

Her senses dulled.

Was that because her mind was focused inwards, or simply because of the colorless gas(?) causing the stench?

She heard a whispering deep in her ears.

It was not coming from outside.

She could not pin it down to any specific direction.

The more she focused, the less she could make it out, but it refused to leave no matter how much she tried to make it go away. The indistinct voice was a lot like a mosquito buzzing around near your ear on a sweltering summer night.

She had been looking at this wrong from the beginning.

Her resistance was fairly irrelevant. Princess Karin had not set a time limit; she had simply said it would continue until Ouka broke and became her puppet. If she could not escape on her own, then she only had two options.

The options were not obey or disobey.

They were to be successfully remade or broken beyond repair.

This may have been similar to a surgical procedure.

“How are you doing?”

After a while, Princess Karin returned.

Ouka could no longer tell if it really was half an hour later or if hours and hours had passed.

“Still supporting yourself on your toes? A normal person’s legs or back would have cramped up by now, so well done there.”

“Shut…up. I…”

“Acting tough is pointless when I can see how swollen your eyelids are. Your body is reaching its limit. That just leaves your mind. Which way are the scales tipping? Will it be next time? Or maybe the time after that? Not that this will end even if it’s the time after the time after the time after the time after that. Whenever it happens, I look forward to hearing you say the word.”

“…”

“Death is the end of all possibilities. No matter how far you fall, you still have a chance of being reunited with those familiar faces as long as you remain alive. That is the logical thinking befitting a kunoichi. Okay, see you again in half an hour.”

During the next half hour, her life ceased flashing before her eyes.

Her breaths caught.

Something was wrong with her throat, so she was wheezing. Princess Karin mad mentioned her eyelids swelling, so maybe her throat was too. Her trachea could be swelling closed. She could no longer support herself on her toes, so a lot more force was placed on her wrists. If that continued long enough, her hands could be permanently damaged, but she doubted she could bring strength back to her legs as they weakly convulsed below her.

The voice was back.

The directionless voice continued to whisper to her like a bug buzzing around by her ear.

(If necrosis sets in…)

This was the only thought on her mind as she trembled with her tongue hanging limply from between her lips.

This was likely the last coherent thought remaining inside her.

(I could…die here.)

“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.” Princess Karin returned and briefly shut off the valve. “But you should have started to notice it by now. To be honest, the gas doesn’t really matter. It’s the steampipe. The faint vibrations pass through the rope and rattle all the bones in your body. Have you been hearing a voice? Did you think you were hallucinating? The necessary instructions have already been inserted into your mind. How long until they take effect differs from person to person, but all that remains is to wait until then.”

“…”

Was this a variation of the technique named Out of the Blue?

A kunoichi made a weapon out of her own feminine beauty and allure, so she could not rely only on pure muscular strength to defeat her enemies. A kunoichi was meant to have a slim and delicate body that made an enemy careless, so they were often forced to fight at a disadvantage. They had done considerable research into how to cause the maximum amount of pain with the minimum amount of force.

When an enemy was prepared for the blow, they could grit their teeth and charge onward even as their skin and flesh were torn by a blade, but if the attack came from an unexpected direction with unexpected timing, then even the prick of a single needle could cause a large man to jump and lose consciousness.

Think of it like a test of courage where someone shoved konjac in your face on the end of a fishing rod. You would only laugh if that happened right in front of you in broad daylight, but your heart would leap out of your mouth if it caught you by surprise in the dark.

“I will remind you that when this ends is up to you. This would already be over if you would pass out and raise the white flag, but your stubbornly strong mind is only making you suffer longer. But I will wait. Wait until the light fades from your eyes.”

She could resist.

Or she could not.

…The result would be the same.

Ouka felt a miniscule but unmistakable crack form in the center of her heart.

Why was she forcing herself to continue suffering suspended from that pipe? What was the point of this? If she could prevent even one tiny part of Princess Karin’s plan, there would be a reason to let years be taken off her life here. But this was wasted effort. Nothing would come of it. The longer she resisted, the closer she would come to being the mindless puppet Princess Karin wanted.

It hit her.

What did it matter if she said the word?

What would her struggles accomplish?

“ You set up your shield in the wrong direction. If you had focused on the vocal data reaching you from the steampipe via bone conduction, it never would have set in so easily.”

Oh, no, thought Ouka.

Yet she could not rid herself of the doubt that continued to grow within her. In fact, the doubt began to weigh heavy on her soul.

If her struggles were meaningless, why not just give in? She could leave the rest in Sugiyado Souha’s hands and let him save her.

She knew that was only wishful thinking. If they failed to notice she had been remade, then she might attack and kill her teacher in his sleep.

But what other choice did she have? A pounding headache grew while all of her thoughts, ideas, and inspiration focused in on that one point.

(Bad idea…planted in my head.)

Her mind grew hazy.

She could no longer make sense of the words there.

Darkness closed in on her vision and her ears heard only Princess Karin’s sweet whispers.

“The choice is yours: will you resist and suffer, or will you give up and be freed from it all. The voice finished its job during the first hour and it is too late to struggle after reaching a lethal dose.”

(Sens-…)

Another half hour passed.

And.

There was no half hour after that.

### 3: The Nymph and the Ninja

“Oh? You look much more determined now, Comrade Souha. Welcome back to the battlefield.”

The Neva River Nymphs were a spy agency for the Cyrillic Empire.

Ekaterina had invited Sugiyado to a parking garage just like so many others in New Sapporo Domain. However, every last vehicle on the third floor were being used by the Empire under false names and they had troops at every exit to ensure their safety.

But the Nymphs were frogmen, so all of their exists were aquatic in nature, like a manhole or a water storage tank.

Sugiyado did not do things their way, but the parking garage still allowed escape in any direction, making it the perfect “hidden village” for those who lived in the darkness. Needless to say, it was not a permanent hideout. The temporary village had been created by gathering mobile homes in the half hour or so since he had contacted them.

The Nymphs’ home ground was always under the water.

“Ugh, they speak an entirely different language here. Everything’s covered in Cyrillic.”

“Asagao,” he chided.

Bara and Hoozuki were not here. They were keeping an eye on Yukizasa and Oume back in the short-term apartment. Splitting up their forces had been necessary, but it still wore on his nerves so soon after Ouka was taken. He knew he was being overprotective, but he still hated being unable to stick together.

“You need our help, do you?” Ekaterina was leaning against the side of a large truck container. “I can mobilize the sub we have out at sea if necessary.”

“I have some good news for you. Both of the strategic anti-air laser beam cannons on the outskirts of the city are back up and running. Some rusty ballistic missiles aren’t going to cut it. Nor would an orbital bombing system that circles the planet waiting for the command to strike, or the latest ballistic systems that break away at ultra-high altitude to attack their target at Mach 5 or greater.”

Ekaterina choked in shock, but he did not care about that right now.

“How is Murakami Michihiko doing?”

“Cough, ugh…h-he is in here.”

She circled behind the container she had been leaning against. She unlocked and opened the double doors to reveal a living space more comfortable than a studio apartment. If you ignored the lack of an internet connection and the fact that the doors could not be opened from within.

What made for a comfortable shut-in life when chosen for yourself turned into hellish solitary confinement when forced upon you. The difference between happiness and unhappiness was often paper thin like that.

A young man sat on the sofa inside wearing the same things he had when they handed him over. He glared at Sugiyado and clearly wanted to give him a piece of his mind, but Sugiyado did not have the time or patience to deal with the young man’s grudge right now. He got straight to the point to hold the initiative.

“Your lifeline was the thermoelectric generation using a giant closed circuit made from the underground linear motor train network.”

“!”

Michihiko’s shoulders jumped.

Whether he agreed with Princess Karin’s plan or not, that was not what he had wanted to hear while in the Cyrillic Empire’s territory. But Sugiyado did not care.

He climbed into the container.

“Help us stop Princess Karin.”

“That is an urgent matter.” The young man weakly shook his head. Horizontally. “But I’m not getting the Empire’s help. That would be like blowing up a dam to put out a fire.”

“Then you can wait here until it’s all over. Just sit here in your air conditioned room on your comfy couch and wait for the result to be read off to you in the flat voice of a news anchor. It won’t be long before you learn after the fact what happened to New Sapporo Domain and the people who murdered your grandfather while he worried for you.”

“…”

“Don’t forget: my debt is to him, not you. Your personal connection with Princess Karin doesn’t really matter. To me, you’re no more than a single component. If that component isn’t working, I can look elsewhere. So quit whining and give me an answer. Will you or will you not help us stop Princess Karin and the Stonewalls?”

First, there was a tongue click.

The young man knew he had no real choice here, which may have shown he still had his pride as a ninja. Even though flopping down in the sofa and going to sleep would have given him a safe route out of here.

From here on, he would be seen as a ninja. Sugiyado Souha had to update his opinion of the young man.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Murakami Michihiko.

“We’ve captured two of the Stonewalls’ core members and have them in our room: Taganuma Yukizasa and Horisato Oume.”

That was enough for Michihiko to freeze. He must have trusted in their skill even as their enemy.

“But I can’t say it was easy. One of ours, Ouka, was taken. We’ve arranged a hostage exchange. We will face Princess Karin directly while you lie in wait and attack from the side. That will be most effective strike.”

“…”

“Whether she lives or dies is up to the strength of that strike. I have no reason to hold back. In fact, I’d prefer to kill her a hundred times over or more since she captured Ouka. 'Which is why I’m leaving the finishing blow to you. You decide how hard you need to hit her.”

Murakami Michihiko had come here as an inspector from Edo, but Sugiyado could guess he had a closer relationship with Princess Karin. When carrying out such a largescale plan, she had attempted to bring him onto her side instead of silencing him. That suggested they had something of an alliance.

Now they would use that against her.

Even if she had killed his grandfather, this was like rubbing salt in the wound according to ordinary bushido. But ninjas lived in a different world from the samurai. Sugiyado was afraid he might carelessly shred her to pieces, so he was giving the young man a chance to show more restraint than that.

And Michihiko was not dumb enough to overlook what this meant.

He had already rejected learning what happened after the fact on TV. He had wanted to play a role in how it ended, so now he lowered his head.

“You have my thanks.”

“Let’s get down to the specifics. Asagao, the map.”

“Here you go.”

Asagao pulled out her phone and an accessory instead of a paper map. A satellite map was displayed on the wall by a simple projector that used a special wavelength of light that showed up even with the lights on.

Sugiyado pointed his chin toward the map on the wall.

“New Sapporo Domain as a whole is Princess Karin’s backyard. I doubt even Ekaterina’s intel collected from the water could fill that gap. So I want your help since you protected the city using the same system she uses. …What are the best locations in the city for holding negotiations? Where should we start to get ahead of Princess Karin here?”

### 4: The Negotiations Begin

Finally, Sugiyado left the mobile home and Asagao followed after him with her cheeks puffed out and her baggy sleeves behind her head.

“Are you sure about this? I doubt he would fully turn on us, but they know each other. He might stop the attack at the last second after seeing Princess Karin in person. Ouka’s life is on the line here, so I don’t like including an uncertain factor like him. Wouldn’t it be better to have you stab her through the heart?”

“Going with the obvious choice won’t work here, Asagao. Princess Karin has the home-field advantage. We can’t escape the city’s ruler if do everything by the book, so we need to introduce a wild card to the mix. We can no longer enjoy this as an away game. We have to throw out the rulebook.”

“But…”

“Also, Princess Karin isn’t our objective here. Taking back Ouka is our top priority, so let’s focus on that while we let him handle the opening act.”

That was when he heard some static in his ear.

He reached a hand to his ear and Asagao began monitoring it with her phone.

“Hello, insolent fool. I wish to discuss this proposed hostage exchange.”

“The gas turbine power plant on the east side.”

“Then I will decide on the time. Tonight at 7. If you do not show then, negotiations are off. Choose your actions carefully if you wish to see Kuhou Ouka again.”

Kuhou Ouka.

Princess Karin had learned her name. He doubted Ouka would have voluntarily given that, so something was happening over there. And with that in mind, he spoke with a voice colder than ice.

“Fine by me, but would you really throw out your only card for a simple penalty like that? Need I remind you I have more than one hostage? That gives me more than one chance, unlike you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I have something much crueler prepared.”

“Do you? I look forward to finding out what. One wrong move and I will kill Yukizasa and Oume with methods you’ve never even imagined. I will use every skill I’ve built up over my career as a professional ninja to invent a method that will be spoken of for a century to come.”

“That should be fun. But with both of us hoping to reclaim someone we care for, I doubt this will play out as a straight exchange. I look forward to seeing how much of a fight you criminals put up.”

The transmission ended.

Asagao shook her head.

But not to say she had failed to trace the signal.

“It came straight from New Sapporo Castle’s classified server. I can’t tell you if she’s in the castle or relaying the signal through there, though.”

They could not easily attack the castle even if they did know she was there. Princess Karin was the ruler of the entire domain, so she could use the city’s systems to their fullest.

Sugiyado clicked his tongue.

“I’m seriously starting to think we might have to kill her.”

### 5: Yukizasa and Oume

They had agreed on 7 PM, but this was not the same as meeting your friends in front of the train station. Arriving right on time was like asking to be killed. The trick to winning and surviving was visiting the surrounding area and setting everything up before 7 PM.

Sugiyado Souha entered their makeshift jail cell with Murakami Michihiko.

“Yukizasa, Oume. We need to talk.”

The short-term apartment’s prefab bathroom was the exact opposite of a tourist destination’s hot spring. The cramped space was surrounded by artificial walls and had no windows, making it feel like a cell. Yukizasa was handcuffed to the bath’s accessibility railing and Oume to the toilet’s pipes, putting them too far apart to reach each other.

Their reactions were very different when he opened the door. Small Yukizasa showed him the raw hostility of a wild beast and sexy Oume cowered down in apparent fear.

“That’s some real basic emotional manipulation.” Murakami sounded exasperated. “Both sadism and a protective desire are based on reliance and possessiveness. If one of them isn’t to your liking, is the other one supposed to draw you in?”

“…”

An appraising silence followed.

But they had to already know that Murakami Michihiko was one of the questioners. That meant he was not on Princess Karin’s side and would not cover for those two.

(Then again, I wouldn’t put it past a ninja to pretend to cooperate with me to help the kunoichis escape.)

Those two were both pros.

No amount of soothing or coaxing from Sugiyado was going to shake them. The most effective move was not violence or kind words. The thick shield held out in front of them would not break. If you wanted them to speak, it was best to confuse them about who was on whose side, leaving them uncertain which way to hold their shield.

“We know everything,” said Sugiyado as if continuing for the young man. “Do you have a secondary and tertiary trap on top of the emotional manipulation? If not, you’ve failed. Give up now.”

That earned him a blatant tongue click.

But not from rough Yukizasa. This came from Oume who expertly used her sweet sex appeal.

She knew her techniques would not work on an instructor of kunoichis. She had probably only hoped her poor attempt would make him feel sorry for her.

Yukizasa and Oume’s top priority would be to determine what Murakami Michiko’s angle was.

But once they moved their shields in that direction, Sugiyado would stab for their exposed sides.

“What do you want?” asked Yukizasa while seated in the bathtub and not even looking his way. She had to know several ways to drag information out of trained ninjas using just the running water in here. And without leaving a single mark on their skin.

But Sugiyado only sighed.

He did not even step inside the bathroom, like he was respecting it as their territory.

Glancing over at Murakami Michihiko before talking would rattle and disconcert those kunoichis far more than any violence or threats.

“?”

Michihiko himself did not know how to respond and caused an unnatural silence, but it was still enough to affect Yukizasa and Oume since they were willing to read several layers too much into anything after being imprisoned like this.

After warming them up like that, Sugiyado got down to business.

Now that they were sufficiently rattled, he got right to the point.

“To be blunt, I don’t see much use in the two of you. We could see pretty much your entire hand from the moment we figured out your trick was using thermoelectric generation with the underground linear motor train network.”

“!”

This was working.

Sexy Oume glared over at small Yukizasa, telling her to mask her reactions better.

“That just leaves what exactly you plan to do with it, but we can figure that out by cornering Princess Karin and getting her to talk. Besides, she might not have even given you two the real reason. Better to get it from a trustworthy source than leave open the possibility of misinformation.”

Oume smiled in a self-deprecating way while bound to the toilet.

She may have decided to speak before Yukizasa could say too much.

“Then why are you even meeting with us? Hoping to distract yourself from your companion’s capture?”

“If it would get her back, I would dismember you in that tub and stuff you in bags. Should I send the bags to New Sapporo Castle? Is Princess Karin emotional enough to cover her face while watching the carnage on a monitor? I kind of doubt it.”

It all came so smoothly.

He was not trying to convince them of anything and he was not displaying any obvious anger or killer intent. He sounded so relaxed it might have passed in one ear and out the other if they were not paying attention. But that was what made it so bone-chilling.

He would do it if necessary.

As easily as he might chop a radish in two on the cutting board.

If he did not radiate that energy and make them hyperventilate, then this was entirely meaningless.

Someone’s life was riding on this.

Kuhou Ouka was a student left in his care. She had gone along with this plan even though she had nothing to gain from it. She was not here, but each of his words and each second that passed could influence whether she lived or died.

“Again, I don’t need anything from you. If I can return you, that’s one less thing I have to worry about.”

His tone remained unchanged.

Even a police officer aiming a gun at a criminal would have shown more emotion while explaining their right to remain silent.

“If I asked you to do something, you wouldn’t do it for me, would you? But keep that within reason, if you don’t mind.”

“…”

“Listen, if I can’t use you for anything, then I won’t. I have no reason to go out of my way to kill you, but I also have no reason to insist on your survival. If things go wrong at the exchange, I will kill you on the spot. The rails have been laid out, so now you either follow them or you intentionally derail. The choice is yours.”

What happened next would be the same either way. Whether they would obey or not, they would still want to know how things were supposed to go down.

“Creating the illusion of choice while guiding us toward the card you want?” Oume kept her voice low while handcuffed to the toilet pipes. “Is this supposed to be a form of mind control?”

“Interpret it however you like, but I’m not lying. You can choose to do what I say or not and that will determine what happens to you.”

“…”

Oume looked over at Murakami Michihiko with the look of a chained-up puppy, but he only sighed.

Sugiyado and Michihiko had not planned any of this out in advance, but that was why a single adlibbed comment could cause such a disturbance.

“I was tricked by the Stonewalls once already, so isn’t it a bit selfish to expect me to be honest with you now?”

“I should have ignored the princess and killed you sooner. An inspector who isn’t in our pocket only brings trouble.”

The traveling shrine maiden talked tough, but a real ninja did not make a show of their killer intent. If you were planning to kill, it was best to look like you would never hurt a fly.

The kunoichis had no ground to stand on here, so they may have hoped to draw out their own hostility this way.

To intentionally disillusion themselves.

To help give up on someone they had thought was on their side.

(How naïve. I won’t say it’s wrong to feel that way, but the more you care about something, the more carefully you have to protect it to avoid being hurt.)

“Now, then.” Sugiyado paused for a beat. “Those are some strong words, but which is it? Yes, or no. This isn’t a choice you can put off. I just hope you choose the card I think you will.”

With that said, he pulled out two stick-shaped digital voice recorders and threw them within arms’ reach of the two girls.

“Everything you need to know is on those. You can replay it as many times as you like. Whatever your intentions, you’re starved for information, right? I left out any maps or photos that require a visual, so do your best to memorize it all from the audio alone.”

### 6: Official Trap Preparations

“Deliveries 2 and 3 are complete. The next one will be the last.”

“Very good.”

Princess Karin nodded calmly at her subordinate’s report while walking through the facility with the hem of her junihitoe dragging behind her. With Taganuma Yukizasa and Horisato Oume captured, half her central team was missing and she had to visit this mass of steel and concrete herself for a direct report.

(To think an organization could be too big.)

But that did not mean she was willing to throw all that away and attempt it with a minimal number of elites.

A metallic thud sounded.

An armored truck’s electronically-controlled suspension had easily lowered a Swift Foot Type-2 Mount. Just a few years ago, the category of 2-wheel armored vehicles had not even existed, but these were essentially a dual-wheeled unit that an armored samurai replaced their lower body with.

They had of course had their origins in large motorcycles, but given their size and weight, they were more like a slimmed-down steamroller.

They were armed with a projectile weapon that resembled a Western bow-and-arrow after combining a rapid-vibration spear with an ultra-flexible bow made from the same special stainless steel used in the springs for skyscraper earthquake countermeasures. Those high-mobility anti-composite-armor weapons had been developed to open a hole in the tanks and 6-legged mobile fortresses that made up the Cyrillic Empire’s primary fighting force. Not only did they function as a weapon at close and long range, but most people would not even want to imagine what became of someone if they were run over by a “slimmed-down steamroller”.

No matter where the enemy was hiding in the gas turbine power plant, these could break right through the wall to reach them. There were plenty of sensors capable of detecting a target right through thick obstacles, such as terahertz waves and magnetic resonance.

She had just one concern.

(The power plant is crucial to the city’s infrastructure. We need to calculate out the acceptable amount of damage and share a map of what areas can be destroyed. If this comes down to a game of deception, we might not have a datalink up at all times.)

They could always reroute all the power from the underground linear motor train network to the city, but that would mean more or less be going public with their secret power source. She wanted to avoid anything so conspicuous.

“The final transport unit is here. Delivery 4 has arrived.”

“Good.”

They were not up against paper targets here.

She had this much at her disposal, but the Shogunate ninja would be working to outwit her in order to survive…and to save the hostage. But what might look like a clever choice could also be narrowing your options through unnecessary assumptions. It was just like a game of shogi. She had her standard heavy firepower, but she also had the secret arts of the ninja. While her opponent was hiding from the obvious threat of the rook or bishop, she would attack with the trickier knight or lance. In other words, she just had to hunt them down with her ninjas.

That meant Princess Karin herself and Amamo.

Then the junihitoe princess opened the trailer of the armored truck that had just arrived and viewed the weapon that had been hardest to procure.

She gave a command to her ultimate weapon that gave off a faint floral scent.

“How are you feeling, my cute kunoichi?”

### 7: To Battle

The gas turbine power plant was located on the east side of the city.

New Sapporo Domain was landlocked and thus could not acquire large quantities of coolant water from the ocean, so thermal power generation was a crucial part of its infrastructure. That said, the old-fashioned coal method pumped out toxic smoke, which was incompatible with preserving a livable environment in the big city. That naturally limited them to using the same city gas as ordinary homes.

That may have been enough to support the people’s lives, but it was insufficient to power the many defense weapons deployed to every corner of the vast northern land. In fact, they could not have the power generation facility openly visible by satellite. If the Cyrillic Empire launched a missile strike on or sabotaged it, all the military systems would go down.

The dull gray building stood out from the surrounding city even with a thin layer of artificial snow.

“It’s generally exactly as Murakami said.”

The sun was setting.

Asagao was using a tablet to view the footage sent by an aerial drone resembling a giant top supported by coaxial rotors.

“The many pipes even cover up the roads running through there. That probably helps prevent satellites from seeing the steam from the pressure release valves and the smoke from the smokestacks, but I can’t get the drone any closer due to all the EM scattered by the turbines. The control interference would be too great if I had it descend any more and who knows when communications will be lost too.”

“Oh? So they don’t stop the power plant even during emergencies?”

“C’mon, Bara. Don’t you know it takes days to inspect and restart the turbines once they stop? Besides, Princess Karin is trying to protect the people. Even if her methods are a little insane.”

Asagao was right. The large reactors found in power plants and ironworks were more efficient when kept running at all times instead of switching them on and off for every little thing.

Princess Karin controlled the local government, so she had use of the official surveillance network, from the security cameras to the satellites, and she could even send in a large military force. Sugiyado’s team was fighting an away game, so they needed a reliable withdrawal point more than a giant weapon. In that sense, the gas turbine power plant was like a jungle of steel and concrete. They could use their ninja techniques to their hearts’ content there.

Hoozuki checked the same screen.

“But, Sensei, she’ll know how to use the place like that too, won’t she? We should assume the security is a lot stricter from normal. They’ll have filled in all the holes and used every advantage it gives them.”

“I know that.”

He had designated the location and Princess Karin had designated the time. She would have chosen a time that gave her enough time to make the preparations she needed. No one would insist on a condition that hurt their position.

And with that in mind…

(That honestly doesn’t matter.)

Sugiyado Souha did not lament his disadvantages.

If you could not ally yourself with your disadvantages, you could never overturn the board from behind the scenes.

(Ninjas are meant to perform the sabotage that a largescale army can’t do. Being at a disadvantage makes it easier to follow our training. Princess Karin, the more you fortify your position with military might, the more thick fat you surround yourself with and the harder you will find it to move.)

When an enemy had 100 large weapons, the more flammable objects you had to trigger explosions with and the more chances to trick the enemy into hitting each other.

When an enemy had 1000 guards, the more opportunities you had to defeat one, steal their uniform, and sneak in and the easier it was to pick up on dissatisfaction within the ranks to start some infighting or find an information leak.

These would be Princess Karin’s chosen troops, but she would not have gathered them all personally. Receiving the same training and education did not mean they all shared the same values and sense of the threat. Gather enough people and holes and misunderstandings were unavoidable. Not even the production lines for cutting-edge weapons had entirely perfected the advance detection of faulty parts.

A ninja knew how to view things in that light. They were like a contrarian that could back up their arguments with real action.

“We don’t actually know where Amamo or Princess Karin are, though. Or Ouka for that matter.”

They had an hour until the promised time of 7.

“It’s time.” Sugiyado teased the scarf over his mouth. “Asagao, switch the drone to programmed flight. We need to leave.”

“Hey, Sensei. I know arriving early to lie in wait is the standard play, but we know the Stonewalls will be there before us. If we arrive too soon, won’t it lead to a skirmish before the hostage exchange?”

Hoozuki was being more timid than usual, but that may have been due to losing Ouka before her eyes. Even Sugiyado had a hard time caring for his wounded heart and fully conquering the fear in such a short time.

And his answer was simple.

“7 was the given time, but we don’t actually have to wait until then. They’ll see it the same way, so I bet this will begin sooner.”

Sugiyado had three cards in his deck: Yukizasa, Oume, and – as a dark horse – Murakami Michihiko. As fighters, he had Bara and Hoozuki. Asagao was his information support. He did not count Ekaterina or the others from the Cyrillic Empire.

Once they had everything they needed, they took different trucks to reach the gas turbine power plant from three different directions.

Hoozuki took Yukizasa.

Bara took Ouma.

And Sugiyado Souha took Murakami Michihiko.

The young man spoke with a bitter look on his face.

He mostly seemed to be speaking to himself.

“The princess must be putting the happiness of New Sapporo Domain and the entire Hokkaido Area first and foremost. I’m certain of it. It’s just that she chose too extreme a method.”

“…”

His loyalty was impressive after having his grandfather killed and being framed for the crime.

Not to mention that he was not a part of the Stonewalls themselves.

“But you can still fight back without hesitation?”

“I am a ninja. I was trained to do so and I trained all my men to do so.”

He must have been taught how to suppress his emotions so he could control himself and survive even when under too much confusion to properly process what was happening. But that was no guarantee the process was working perfectly.

Sugiyado did not teach that method.

He taught his students how to use their emotions to fuel their progress, but he would not teach them how to stifle what they felt. That would be antithetical to teaching them how to live their lives.

“What happened between you and the old man?”

“Nothing,” spat out Michihiko while looking aside. He apparently felt some guilt. “A family member turned out to be a criminal. Enough of one to be sent to max-security Abashiri. Is it that odd that we became estranged after that? And remember that I’m a Shogunate ninja. I can never be open about it, but I am a civil servant.”

“Are you sure that’s all?”

If so, why had he been unable to throw out the ninja tool the old man made?

Sugiyado hid that question in his tone.

Michihiko sighed.

“He took the blame for a government official’s crime to protect the Shogunate. No matter how much I wanted to tell the truth, I would only have been ensuring he did it all for nothing. How am I supposed to stay in touch with someone during all that? I couldn’t manage it. My personal sense of justice was shaken by it.”

That did sound like that old man.

Sugiyado thought on it while holding the steering wheel. That explained why the old man had felt so different from the other prisoners. He had gotten by so easily within the complex power balance of the special prison, so it had seemed unlikely he would have been unable to avoid trouble in the outside world and committed a crime without covering his tracks properly.

“I’m not even going to try to change how you feel about Princess Karin.”

“Wha-?”

“I said I’m not even going to try, so I don’t need any arguments from you. I have no guarantee I could do anything about it on such short notice even if I wanted to.” Sugiyado sounded exasperated. “But you were so intent on stopping her plan that you turned a blade on her in the castle. She isn’t someone we can outdo while negotiating through the proper channels. Ouka is a complete stranger to you, but you will never have a better shot at defeating Princess Karin and the Stonewalls. Screw this up and there is no stopping New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area. Keep that in mind.”

“…”

For Murakami Michihiko, he was avenging his grandfather’s death.

He would be aware of that and also aware the he still could not bring himself to abandon Princess Karin.

He was in a bind, but the clock was still ticking.

“If this fails, this will no longer be a job for ninjas. The Shogunate might send in an army. Or the Empire might. Princess Karin would be shot to death beyond your reach or she would kill herself inside her blazing castle. If you want to avoid that, then do what you deem best now.”

They did not even consider entering through the main gate.

Sugiyado parked in an empty lot a short distance away.

“Follow the plan.”

“You too. You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”

“Ninjas always have their secrets.”

“…”

“So I will tell you what I can assure you is true: I respect your grandfather and I will do whatever it takes to rescue Ouka. We’re on equal footing here. You use me toward your ends and I’ll do the same with you. Now, let’s go.”

Alone, Sugiyado hopped atop the wall surrounding the empty lot dusted with artificial snow and then jumped to the roof of a nearby building. He noted a quiet beeping and held a hand to his ear while continuing his three-dimensional movement.

“I have a reading from the sensor. Murakami Michihiko has begun to move. Let him move freely from now on.”

“Got it, Sensei. We have Yukizasa and Oume on standby.”

“Murakami was present when you interrogated those two, so keep in mind that his name will spread quickly, Sensei.”

Hoozuki was right. But Murakami Michihiko was not meant as an unseen assassin. Hints of his presence were meant to rattle Princess Karin, so perfectly hiding him would be counterproductive.

People had a tendency to see ghosts in the dark because they feared incomplete information more than anything. That was when their imagination kicked in.

“Release Oume.”

Now.

The other side would have everything set up for the confrontation here, but what would they least expect when hoping to retrieve hostages?

To find one of the supposed hostages wandering around before the negotiations began. That alone could would fill them with tension and cause their preparations to crumble.

They could no longer just ready their shields and tense their bodies. Accepting in their ally would require opening a gap in their shields.

(If we’re lucky, Oume will mention Murakami Michihiko. Just as the Stonewalls think they can escape the tension by focusing on Oume, the ground will open up below their feet. Just like someone who makes one final burst of speed to finish a marathon, only to learn they’re at the halfway point.)

“Hold onto Yukizasa,” he said while jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

“Hey, Sensei. Shouldn’t we have waited until we had confirmed Ouka’s presence here? If they don’t respond, we’ll have wasted one of our cards.”

“I know you’re worried, Hoozuki, but stay focused. It would take us all night to track down where in that labyrinthine power plant Ouka and Princess Karin are. Remember that we still have Yukizasa if this doesn’t work out.”

Needless to say, Princess Karin’s side had to be much more careful since they only had Ouka. If things did not go according to plan, they would either fortify their defenses or withdraw. Either option would stand out. Sugiyado’s side still had to be on the lookout for a bluff, but if they had a way to pinpoint locate Ouka or Princess Karin, it was worth using.

“Transmissions intercepted,” reported Asagao. “It’ll take me a while longer to break the encryption, but I can see where the most traffic is. There is a lot going from Area D2 to E5. That’s where Oume is wandering around blindfolded and handcuffed.”

“So they’re freaking out.”

The other side had to be simulating a number of scenarios. If they went to save her, would they get sniped? If they focused their forces there, would they be leaving another area too thinly guarded? What they did know was that Sugiyado’s side was not going to negotiate in the normal way and that they could not carelessly execute Ouka in retaliation since he still had Yukizasa. He had sent Oume back alive to spread hope through the other side. By not sending back a corpse, he proved that that they could get their people back alive if they played their cards right. That would make them want Yukizasa back as well. They could no longer dryly tell themselves those two were a lost cause.

As a result, they would want to keep Ouka alive no matter what.

“The Stonewalls have contacted and collected Oume. What now?”

“Leave them be. Don’t snipe anyone who approaches. They’ll panic even more because they won’t know if this was done as a sign of good will or as part of a dangerous scheme. The danger here isn’t whether or not their guess is right. If they can find an explanation they accept, they can recover from their confusion.”

“Sensei, vehicles are gathering in A2, diagonally across the grounds from E5,” reported Asagao. “That’s near the rear entrance. Now that they have Oume, their formation is collapsing. They probably want to retrieve Ouka before they take any major damage and then try this all again. They hope repeating the process will get them Yukizasa back as well.”

They were quick to react.

At this rate, they would be gone before Oume could say Murakami Michihiko was their enemy.

Now was the time to act.

This was just like the theater of a scam artist.

To keep the negotiations running smoothly, he could not let the Stonewalls regain their cool.

“Understood, Asagao. I’ll deal with it.”

“Princess Karin isn’t the only one there. Just like we have Murakami as a trump card, they have the still-unseen Amamo. Not to mention all their ordinary forces. Be careful, Sensei!”

“Didn’t I teach you times like this are the best opportunities, Asagao?”

He jumped between rooftops and ran down a catwalk-like pathway suspended in the air. He made sure to avoid casting a shadow on the ground below to avoid the troops patrolling there.

Another figure jumped over him on the next level up.

(Is that Murakami Michihiko?)

Sugiyado thought about the young man while their shadows intersected. Murakami was cooperating because he had his own plans, but they had yet to see what those plans were. Why was he still willing to support Princess Karin after she killed his blood relative? There was a missing piece to this puzzle.

(I hope that doesn’t come back to bite us, but I need to focus on Ouka right now.)

He wanted to ignite the city gas and blow every one of them to smithereens for capturing his adorable student, but that was not the ninja way. Combat and killing should be avoided when at all possible.

He traveled along various pipes and pathways to reach the area he wanted.

Area A2 was the safe exit the other side had created.

(This is my chance.)

The enemy had a large force, so if they wanted to leave while protecting their precious hostage, they would have to use several heavy bulletproof cars. And to leave the grounds, they would have to pass through a gate that acted as a bottleneck.

At present, they had 5 bulletproof cars lined up one behind the other with a two-wheeled Swift Foot at the very front and back. Even a tank or attack helicopter would get its ass kicked in a head-on shootout.

But that did not matter here.

Sugiyado silently pulled a Fierce Fang from the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

A moment later, he launched it down like a bolt of lightning at the two-wheeled armored vehicle in the lead as it passed through the gate. The mass of composite armor was a cross between giant armor and a large motorcycle – creating something like a slimmed-down steamroller – but it was no more than scrap metal when enough nitrogen gas to pry open a crushed car door stripped the processing unit from its back.

The defeat came so suddenly that the vehicles behind it crashed into it and each other from behind. The gate kept them from driving around, so shifting to reverse was their only option. However…

(One more.)

The mount in the rear was aiming its enormous castle-busting bow around and scanning for the enemy, but it too ceased moving after a dull rumble of destruction.

Now the armored vehicles were blocked in the front and back.

“Sh!!”

Sugiyado Souha pulled out another air pressure kunai, jumped down from a height of about three stories, and made a swift attack.

He flipped down toward the vehicles.

He felt light as a feather for the few seconds before landing and he used that time to throw several air pressure kunais toward the trapped bulletproof cars.

It was like piercing a piece of cloth with a sewing machine’s needle.

The blades stabbed into the thick hoods and the power of the nitrogen gas forced those wounds wider, sending sinister sparks flying from the engine compartments. However, the engines were not his aim – he was trying to cut the power cables from the batteries. The doors and windows were thick and bulletproof, so motors were used to help with their great weight when opening or closing them. He did not even need to defeat the lower-ranked ninjas. By cutting the power, he could trap them inside those bug cages.

After lightly landing in the snow, Hoozuki and Bara’s voices finally reached him.

“Sensei, we can’t provide covering fire if you do that!!”

“You’re being too reckless. I get wanting to rescue Ouka as soon as possible, but still.”

“What are you talking about?” he replied.

The ninja did not bat an eye after destroying seven 2-wheel armored vehicles and bulletproof cars in quick succession. He seemed to be saying he would take out twice that many if need be.

He turned back the way he had come and peeked in the windows of the vehicles as he passed by. The passengers belatedly aimed their blades and guns his way, but they could not attack him through the thick bulletproof glass even from the inside. He calmly walked by those people who could only sit idly by and watch and he found what he wanted in the third from the front.

Kuhou Ouka.

The twintails girl sat in the back seat in between two people dressed all in black. Her head was drooping weakly and her eyes seemed to radiate exhaustion, but she had no obvious exterior injuries.

Their side had just the one hostage.

Without a spare, they could not afford to let her die. Even Princess Karin must have felt a need to treat her with care.

But what did that matter?

Sugiyado had to consciously regulate his breathing to suppress the anger flaring up within him.

The Stonewall troops seated on the other side of the thick bulletproof glass looked tense but also somewhat relaxed. The bulletproof door could not be opened from either side, so if they waited around, the heavy firepower of the samurai mounts or a kunoichi like Amamo or Princess Karin would arrive. Their boss could not abandon them when they were looking after the precious hostage. Sugiyado gave them an exasperated look as he pulled a hair spray can and a lighter from his pocket.

He ignited the spray for a simple flamethrower that he first used to roast the glass from the outside. Then he opened a hole in the bottom of the can with the tip of a kunai, releasing the gas that had been stored inside as a compressed liquid at less than -30 degrees. That produced a disconcerting cracking sound.

Bulletproof glass was made to stop a bullet, but it was still glass. It could not survive rapid temperature changes. Even the clear film between the layers had been melted by the heat.

“Eek!”

A 10cm diameter hole was enough.

The Stonewall on the right was too shocked to move and the one on the left could not decide whether to aim their gun at Sugiyado or Ouka. Both were soon knocked out by the air pressure kunai that flew in from outside to hit them on the head or chest.

The nitrogen gas was not needed here.

Although he would have “pried open” their flesh and blood had they actually aimed a gun at Ouka.

“Ouka.”

He called into the car while sticking his hand in through the broken glass to unlock the door. He could not open the heavy door with his arm strength alone, so he stuck an air pressure kunai in the crack and forced it open.

“Well done enduring long enough to give us this chance, Ouka. It’ll all be okay now.”

“…”

She did not respond.

When he saw how she only sluggishly turned her head, he wrapped his arms around her. They must have done something to her while she was captured. Sealing off her emotions and locking down her mind may have been the only way to protect her psyche when she had no way to escape.

He had taught her how to do that.

The only other solution was suicide. He wanted to praise her for not going with that option.

“Let’s get out of here.” He held her head to his chest. “We’ll get you somewhere safe. We can think about crushing the Stonewalls after that.”

Sensing a stirring in the driver’s seat, he threw a kunai without even thinking. He did not even look in that direction.

He thought through his options while collecting the kunais lying within the car.

The troops trapped inside their own bulletproof cars could not move, but they would be communicating via radio. Reinforcements would be arriving soon. The 2-wheeled samurai mounts, the ordinary infantry, Amamo, and Princess Karin were all present at the gas turbine power plant, so he could not just hang around forever.

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

He cursed himself for being too useless to even carry his own student to safety and he spoke into the mic hidden within his scarf.

“I’ve retrieved Ouka. Hoozuki, you help me carry her out of here. Bara, you look out for enemies and provide covering fire from a distance. I repeat, I have retrieved her. You can reduce Yukizasa’s priority level. Leave her in the vehicle tied up and gagged. Just silence anyone who gets in the way of Hoozuki and Ouka’s escape. But don’t pursue them too far. Only hold them back while keeping yourself safe. I don’t want them taking another hostage.”

“Got it, Sensei.”

“Someone is already headed your way! There are too many flammable objects to get a clear line of fire!!”

He heard a loud metallic clang from overhead. Ninjas usually moved silently, so this was an intentional declaration of war.

“…”

Ouka could walk on her own with some guidance, so he wrapped an arm around her and left the bulletproof car. Propping her up was light enough. He was not actually carrying her, so his spine’s restrictions did not matter.

The noise had come from around two stories up, atop the complex arrangement of pipes.

The bright colors of a heavy junihitoe danced in the buffeting wind atop a horizontal steel cylinder thicker than a child was tall.

“Princess Karin.”

“You’re a surprisingly earnest person. But you were a little early, insolent fool.”

He detected a sweet aroma through his scarf.

Kunoichis often used poisons and using your nose was not always safe, but he saw through it right away. This was not a poison. It was the oil used in beauty care.

Silently, he let his anger build in his brow.

Princess Karin held a one-handed hammer made entirely out of metal. The blunt weapon allowed even a slender woman to smash through a helmet or bulletproof jacket, so it was more convenient even than a more threatening-looking blade. Plus, this was a ninja weapon with a hollow grip that could be used as a gun.

(Where’s Murakami Michihiko?)

The boy was not foolish enough to look around for him. The young man would likely rattle Princess Karin more than anything, but there was no sign of him rushing out right away.

Princess Karin spun the sinister and heavy ninja weapon like a baton.

“Now, how to interpret this situation? We have already retrieved Oume. I thought for sure she would be wrapped in bombs or something, but no.”

“I’m not going to say I’m done with you. I will crush you – thoroughly – even if you are doing all this for a good cause. I’m through fighting to repay a debt of gratitude. Do not underestimate the power of vengeance, little girl.”

“Oh, how scary.” She hid her mouth behind her sleeve and laughed in a way as elegant as it was sinister. “But we need Yukizasa back too, so I must insist that the negotiations continue.”

“Ouka was your only card. What else can you offer?”

“I have not miscounted. I just need her to work a little longer for me. Do it, Ouka.”

She gave an arrogant command.

The twintails girl was closer to him than anyone as he held his arm around her slender waist.

And a moment later, a dull thud rang out as the Fierce Fang in Sugiyado Souha’s hand slammed mercilessly into the center of his student’s chest.

The trap had failed.

He had defused it in an instant.

Even Princess Karin was taken aback by the speed with which he acted. Not the physical speed, the speed of his decision.

“Oh? That seemed to catch you by surprise, yet you still made up your mind so quickly?”

All emotion had vanished from the instructor’s face.

He would act when it was necessary.

Even if that meant attacking one of his precious students.

Because he knew holding back would only put both their lives at greater risk.

He had attacked over the skintight, bulletproof, and blade-resistant ninja outfit. That had stopped the tip of the blade, but the impact had still reached her, instantly knocking her unconscious. He could not support her limp weight, so he let go of her hips and let her collapse to the thin layer of artificial snow.

A trap.

A surprise attack.

His guard was too strict for that to work. He had taken the optimal action like a machine.

“Now you’ve done it.”

Yet he shed tears of blood.

Literally. Keeping the emotion from his face worked his facial muscles so hard that the corners of his eyes tore, sending red drops down his cheeks.

The ordinary ninja rules had collapsed.

He did not reject the emotions themselves.

Killer intent erupted from his entire body like a great invisible mass.

“ You made me turn a blade on one of my students again, little girl. ”

No longer would he limit himself to the optimal level of violence.

Or maybe he never had.

“Hoozuki.”

The silver ponytail girl slid up on Countless Calamities, a motorcycle kept silent by the overuse of soundproofing materials.

He did not even look her way.

“Take care of Ouka. Check her inside and out for transmitters and bugs, tie her up and gag her, and then carry her back to Asagao. …Asagao, you heard that, right? Sleep deprivation and exhaustion wouldn’t work in such a short time. Stimulation of light or sound must have been used to rapidly wear her down and steal away her free will. Prepare to break the hypnotism, restore her nutrient levels, and recover her autonomic nerves. Break all of her bonds.”

“What about you, Sensei?” asked his silver-haired student while gently lifting up Ouka.

He had let his emotions show, which was not at all like a ninja or an instructor.

Yes.

He had pulled a Fierce Fang from his shirt while he glared up at Princess Karin.

“I will destroy everything she’s built up: her castle, her fortune, her dream – everything .”

He had allowed all of this to happen, so he had to end it himself.

### 8: A Dogfight Sans Aircraft

Sugiyado Souha had taught those four girls everything there was to know about being a ninja.

But he had never neglected their emotions in the process. He had not taught them to throw out those feelings. He had not let them become unfeeling murder machines.

So.

The boy who valued emotions to that extent would of course feel something here.

“You’re dead.”

“Oh, how fun.”

He jumped from the bulletproof car he had destroyed to reach the top of a 2-wheeled samurai mount, and jumped from there to the second-story pipes where Princess Karin waited. He was not supported by the high-polymer water-absorbing gel chemical winches or electric potential elastic belt cylinders found in Bara or Hoozuki’s ninja outfits. He pulled it off with pure martial arts taken to their extreme.

Princess Karin took a step back on a thick pipe running parallel to his and swung her hammer with a side throwing motion.

The tungsten steel nail hidden in the grip burst from within.

The hammer’s weight and centrifugal force flung it with more power than a simple swing of her arm could have managed.

And she had aimed for the moment he landed, making it impossible to dodge.

“!!”

The ninja boy swung his air pressure kunai to deflect the projectile, but she chose that moment to rush in. All ten of her fingers raced along the hammer’s grip. The movement was as subtle as a stage magician’s trick, but Sugiyado did not overlook it. She had loaded the hollow grip with a powder wrapped in thin paper.

(A blinding powder made from dried jellyfish tentacle!?)

Stingers like that did not fully lose their toxicity when dehydrated, so this was one possible use for them. If she swung her hammer from a few meters away, creating a cloud of toxic stingers too small to see, he would have no way to dodge or defend against it. A powdered attack was not something he could bring down with a swing of a kunai and losing his sight even for a second would mean death at the moment.

He had only one way of preventing her move.

(Make my own move!!)

He stepped forward to reach her before she could swing her arm. She made a last-minute alteration to her hammer’s path to block the kunai aimed for the side of her head.

The two metal weapons crashed together.

“Kh.”

“…!!”

The kunai and hammer pushed against each other while they glared at each other from point black range.

A samurai would use a single sword for attack and defense, but ninjas were different. Locking weapons was not enough to stop the flow of time.

Princess Karin’s foot aimed for Sugiyado’s shin, so he pulled that leg back out of the way, releasing their locked weapons. The hammer finally swung enough to scatter the dried jellyfish stingers contained in its hollow grip

But Sugiyado was not about to sit around waiting for that.

He ruptured the thumb-sized pack of nitrogen rapid-foaming agent used by the air pressure kunai to disturb the air in front of him. The dried stingers were no threat if they could not harm the mucous membranes of his eyes, nose, and mouth.

In fact, Princess Karin now had to do something about the stingers being pushed back her way. One always had to pay careful attention to the wind direction when using a toxic cloud.

“Tch!!”

With a wave of her heavy junihitoe’s large sleeve, she whipped up enough wind to protect her face. It was well done given how little time she had to react, but she had still given Sugiyado more time to move. Instead of forcing himself to run through the toxic cloud of jellyfish stingers, he threw a Fierce Fang toward her center line from a few meters away. He pictured it like jabbing her with a spear.

Sparks flew.

She had knocked the kunai from the air with her hammer and took a few steps back to put distance between them while she swung her blunt weapon like a baton.

“Hm, not bad. I had assumed you were no more than a pimp who ordered his favorite kittens around, but it seems you can do some things yourself.”

He did not dignify that with a response.

He wasn’t interested in listening to her until he had knocked out those pretty front teeth of hers and her bloody mouth was begging for her life, so he wordlessly readied a Fierce Fang in his right hand.

Nothing signaled the battle resuming.

Without hesitation, they both jumped sideways from the parallel pipes. In other words, into the air. They jumped from foothold to foothold – sometimes to a narrow elevated pathway much like a catwalk, sometimes a concrete roof, and sometimes a bit sticking out from the side of a vertical smokestack. They remained parallel to each other, judging the best timing to target each other.

Sugiyado Souha used his air pressure kunai.

Princess Karin used her hammer equipped with a gun barrel.

Both ninja weapons could be used at close and long range. A moment’s inattention would mean a hit to their vitals, but focusing entirely on that would mean missing their next footing and falling from a great height. It was like a dogfight with death. Their midair interplay of offense and defense was pulled off so smoothly it actually felt odd they had no wings.

And Princess Karin was not Sugiyado’s only enemy.

Her lips produced a bewitching whisper as she spun her hammer like a baton, waiting for the right moment to fire.

“Swift Foot, shoot down the intruder.”

A fearsome attack was launched up from a 2-wheel armored vehicle that looked like a cross between a slimmed-down steamroller and an armored warrior. The weapon resembled a modern bow, but it was actually a cross between a rapid-vibration spear with an ultra-flexible bow made from the same special stainless steel used in the springs for skyscraper earthquake countermeasures. The heavy weapon was capable of tearing through a tank or a 6-legged mobile fortress. Sugiyado performed a flip at the last second and saw the thick crane he had been using for footing partially torn away.

“…!!”

The destructive power rivaled a ship-mounted railgun.

Buffeted by the resultant winds, he veered away from his intended landing point, so Princess Karin directed the sinister hollow grip of her hammer his way from her own footing.

When had she even reloaded it?

The lit fuse gave off a pale orange light reminiscent of a lit cigarette. There was no trigger, so she only had to shove it into the hole on the side of the grip to light the gunpowder within.

(Here it comes!!)

He had no bulletproof equipment, so a direct hit from a ship’s artillery or an ordinary bullet would leave him just as dead. Still spinning through the air, he spread his legs to shift his center of gravity and take more unpredictable evasive action.

“Swift Foot, fire a second round.”

More firepower was launched from the snowy ground, but not to destroy Sugiyado or his next footing.

(The air. Will that change the bullet’s path!?)

The light gunshot was nearly drowned out by the larger blast from the ground. The metal grip had been hollowed out to act as a matchlock gun barrel. The bullet was tiny, but that allowed the wind to more easily alter its path and it pursued Sugiyado with a serpentine movement. Mechanical rifling would have given it too stable a trajectory. This trick could not be replicated with a cutting-edge assault rifle or anti-materiel rifle.

Still hanging in the air, the ninja swung his kunai.

Sparks flew.

He just barely managed to deflect the deadly bullet, but he was the one to frown when he landed on some metal reinforced by the pieces surrounding it like a jungle gym. This was exactly what Princess Karin had wanted. He had let her speed influence him. Even though he knew he could not keep up with cutting-edge equipment once he got used to the old-fashioned matchlock.

She said something while jumping to her next footing. Based on the movement of her lips, she said, “That’s one.”

At this rate, she would gradually throw off his senses until she could finally bring him down.

He needed to eliminate the teamwork between ground and air.

As he jumped around to rise from the third story to the fourth story, he subtly altered what kind of footing he chose. This gas turbine power plant was very obviously an away game flooded with enemies for him, but they could not afford to destroy a piece of their home infrastructure. He used the spacious power plant’s most dangerous flammable objects as a shield.

Also…

(I can choose areas where the path of the pipes would guide the secondary explosions toward her. She’s their temporary master and only princess. That should weigh heavier on the scales than just the facility.)

“Swift Foot, fire a third round.”

“!?”

“What, you think I would fear for my own life after setting foot on the battlefield? Frankly, I am offended you thought me a mere observer here to enjoy the show. Fire.”

He did not even have time to respond to her.

Cylindrical containers larger than school classrooms were lined up in a row. Those suction vessels took in air and mixed that with the city gas pumped in through pipes in order to produce the optimal flammability for use in industrial power generation. If they ruptured, they would spew toxic gas and a single spark of static would cause an immediate-

Kaboooooooooom!!!???

Sugiyado had leaped into the air just beforehand, so the blast slammed into him and unnaturally extended his jump. The incredible heat prickled at his skin like needles and the noise left his ears numb.

At a fourth story height, he tucked his arms in and extended his legs to spin like a figure skater. He used the spin to stabilize his balance like a gyroscope.

“Tch!!”

“You should take this as a compliment, insolent fool.”

Meanwhile, Princess Karin remained on the same footing and spun her metal hammer like a baton. She did not try to pursue him. Was she going to throw the tungsten steel? Whatever she had planned, she was sticking to long-range attacks to cooperate with the gunner on the ground to hit him with the crossfire.

In other words…

“Because I have deemed the damage to this critical infrastructure a price worth paying for your defeat.”

She was not going to let this continue.

Now that she had guided him where she wanted, she would finish him off. The execution phase had begun.

But Sugiyado had never planned to let this last all that long either.

This was an away game for him.

(So!!)

He rapidly spun himself to secure the centrifugal force to throw a kunai like the hammer throw. Instead of aiming for Princess Karin at the same height as him, he targeted the deadly 2-wheeled Swift Foot mount on the ground. The kunai hit the armored arm at the shoulder joint.

It stabbed in.

The blade was forced open by the nitrogen, tearing the arm apart from within using 15 tons of force.

The weapon still had its bow at the ready, so what happened if its aim was thrown off and its finger slipped from the bowstring?

“Do it.”

“Ha ha!! Won’t be taken out so easily, will you!?”

The weapon’s shifted aim moved toward Princess Karin. Her junihitoe fluttered around as she swung her hammer to the side and moved to a different piece of footing. She demonstrated the impressive skill needed to dodge the all-destroying ultra-heavy metal arrow while also accurately sending out a tungsten steel nail, but Sugiyado had altered his spin when he reached out his arm to throw the kunai. The thick nail shot right past his face and then his sense of speed returned to normal.

Princess Karin was about four stories up after landing on the metal latticework resembling a jungle gym that surrounded and reinforced a round smokestack.

Sugiyado landed one step down on the end of a steel beam twisted by the Swift Foot’s attack.

They had both made irregular landings, so they were off balance. There would be no better chance to end this.

“!!”

“!?”

They were past trading words.

No more tricks either.

Sugiyado Souha’s Fierce Fang left his hand at about the time the flintlock bullet was fired from Princess Karin’s hammer.

The two intersected along the straight line path between the two of them.

However…

“Gah!?”

Scorching pain filled Sugiyado’s right shoulder and he nearly fell from his temporary footing.

Princess Karin grinned.

And.

Still smiling, she wobbled to the side from the hit to the center of her chest.

(…?)

She had subtly shifted her position at the last second. He had aimed for her solar plexus to knock her unconscious, yet she had taken it to her chest, which was even more risky. Had she wanted to take the blow where she had the greatest bulletproofing?

The jungle gym of a reinforcing lattice proved to be a poor choice. She was unable to recover her balance and fell limply out into empty air.

“…”

Sugiyado thought for just a moment and then threw another kunai. This time, he targeted the excess fabric of her heavy junihitoe. The blade pierced through and stabbed into the metal wall to pin her in the air, averting the plummet to her death.

“This is over.”

“Gh…”

He had been hit in the right shoulder, but the bullet had only grazed the surface. The bone and nerves were undamaged, so he could still fight.

“Now, it’s time to beg for your life. Take too long and your own precious clothing will strangle you. Struggle too much and you’ll dislodge the kunai and fall.”

But he did not actually have a good reason to care so much about defeating her. His promise with the old man had been about Murakami Michihiko who was alive and he had retrieved Ouka.

Why was he doing this?

Because if he kept the rest of the enemies focused on her, Ouka and the others could escape safely.

The soldiers and 2-wheeled mounts on the ground were locked onto him but could not fire. She had ordered her people to fire with no regard for what would happen to the gas turbine power plant, but they could not actually fire on their own master without direct instructions from her. She was a princess and that status meant something. Killing her could get their entire family slaughtered as punishment.

She was plotting something in this northern land, but he did not need to know the details. He had revealed the secret of the new power source using the underground linear motor train network. He could wait for Ouka to recover and then destroy their Achilles heel. They already knew how to defeat Yukizasa, Oume, and Princess Karin. They had the advantage.

Or so he thought.

But…

(Where’s Murakami Michihiko?)

This looked like illogical revenge.

He could not blame anyone for seeing it that way. And there had to be some kind of deep bond between Murakami Michihiko and Princess Karin. Enough to overcome their differences in ninja school and in position – one an inspector from Edo and the other leader of the Stonewalls. Sugiyado had never expected the young man to follow his instructions. Or more accurately, to only follow his instructions. No matter what he said, he would have second thoughts once he saw Princess Karin’s stronghold about to fall. He might not outright betray Sugiyado, but he would make some irregular action that trip Sugiyado up. And Sugiyado had expected that display of humanity would distract and rattle Princess Karin by stirring up some feelings inside her.

“…”

But after all this, nothing had happened.

Why wasn’t Murakami Michihiko panicking?

He should have been ready to protect her with his own life at this point.

And.

He had defeated and restrained their boss, so why wasn’t Amamo doing anything? That kunoichi was powerful enough to defeat Ouka, but she had yet to make an appearance. Holding something in reserve should have been meaningless when their big boss was about to be defeated. If it was true Princess Karin had poisoned her father to steal his authority as domain lord, then the collapse of her plan would get them all judged as traitors even if they surrendered. That would mean death for their entire family. He doubted Amamo would sit idly by and let that happen.

What could this mean?

“It can’t be…”

Just then, something slammed hard into his back.

A bullet had been fired into the very center of his back by a matchlock weapon with its power intentionally kept low. But this shot had not come from the surface. It had clearly arrived horizontally from the same height.

(Matchlock.)

He could not breathe.

His spine was damaged enough already and it cried in protest over something other than the weight limit.

(Fired from a hammer just like Princess Karin’s!?)

This had caught him completely by surprise.

He had failed to respond in time.

So.

His survival was nothing he had done intentionally; it was pure coincidence. The kunais hidden in the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt had just so happened to function as metal armor.

He was knocked off balance, but before his feet fully slipped from under him, he kicked off the bent and twisted steel beam to jump.

He heard the metallic clang of a strike from the hammer itself. His assailant had pounded hard on the footing he had just vacated. Had he been a moment slower, the assassin’s meteoric leap would have split his head open.

He brought his feet together to land atop a lightning rod and easily turned around.

That hammer was the same ninja weapon used by Princess Karin.

And the final kunoichi had never made an appearance before this.

There was only one conclusion.

There was another.

He saw a kunoichi in a junihitoe who looked identical to Princess Karin!

He did not know how deep the masquerade went. It could have been special makeup, or it could have been plastic surgery. Either way, the photo found on New Sapporo Castle’s classified server must have been replaced with someone else’s for security purposes.

At any rate, he made a split-second decision.

He adjusted his grip on his kunai.

“Was that a body double and you’re the real Princess Karin!?”

“Does it really matter?”

She twirled the hammer like a baton. Every little mannerism was the same, making it all very confusing.

“I have mastered Amamo’s techniques and Amamo has learned how to rule in my place, so either one of us can achieve the same results. Which one of us is Princess Karin and which one is Amamo is a mere triviality to us.”

That was when Sugiyado threw his air pressure kunai.

The 20-year-old in a junihitoe prepared to knock it from the air with her hammer, but then something unexpected happened.

Sparks flew further out in front of her.

A young man had moved between them in midair and knocked the kunai down with a long, silver-shining wind instrument.

This may have been the first time Sugiyado saw true surprise on the junihitoe woman’s face.

“Murakami, you dumbass!”

“What’s this, Princess Karin? I thought you always spoke like a proper lady in front of him.”

Sugiyado smiled a little. His attack had been blocked, but things were working out in his favor. The unverified information from Oume must have reached her, but actually seeing the young man was much more of a shock.

And in contrast…

“Sorry.”

The young man had a bitter look on his face.

He squeezed the words out toward Sugiyado like he was squeezing out his own blood.

“I’m sorry!!”

And.

However Sugiyado felt on the inside, his strategy required him to sneer at the young man here.

“How sweet. With bonds like that, I’m certain this is the real Princess Karin.”

Murakami Michihiko was not fully taking her side. He had saved her without thinking when he saw a blade headed her way, but he also knew what she had done.

(We each had a trick up our sleeve, but Murakami and Amamo canceled each other out.)

He could have ended up in a situation where he did not know which was the real one. Or they could have worked together like identical twins. They would have had several troublesome options available, so he was glad he had avoided them.

Who was an enemy and who was an ally?

The direction blades were pointed on the surface was a trivial matter in the ninja world. Sugiyado Souha had some feelings he kept on the inside here.

(This worked out well for me. You did a good job, Michihiko. I can see why that old man cared so much for you.)

A hesitant blade was a weak blade.

There had always been a chance that metal flute would be aimed at Sugiyado by the time this was over, but he had nothing to fear if he knew it was possible. He could give up on that young man’s help as long as he kept in mind the risk of an attack from an unexpected angle. Sugiyado already expected nothing from him while Princess Karin held onto some hope there, so they viewed the board and the pieces differently. She would never reach victory if she continued to fear a nonexistent ghost piece.

In other words…

(This is my chance!!)

Sugiyado had worked through a lot in his head, but very little actual time had passed.

He was only resting his feet atop a lightning rod, so he could not stay for long.

He aimed for the slight opening created in Princess Karin by the surprise appearance of Murakami Michihiko. He pictured it like hitting the baseball between two defensive players. Either one could catch it by reaching out their hand, but it passed through a psychological midpoint where they were both unsure if they should go for it or let the other go for it, ultimately just watching it fly by.

Also, Murakami Michihiko was in midair without any footing. He could not stay there for long and blocking that heavy attack had knocked him off balance.

So…

“Ohhh!!” roared Sugiyado.

“Move, Murakami!!” shouted Princess Karin.

The boy spread his arms like wings with a kunai in each hand, but instead of throwing them, he made a powerful leap. He aimed for Murakami Michihiko who had his hands full with the one attack. He was imbalanced in midair and Sugiyado Souha mercilessly placed his foot on his gut.

It was temporary.

It would not last.

But he was close enough to attack Princess Karin and with no one to get in the way this time. He would defeat her and end this conflict in New Sapporo Domain!!

“Kh.”

However, Princess Karin had to be equally aware how crucial this moment was. It did not matter if they were the home team or away team or if they were a group or an individual. At this moment, only their skill as ninjas would determine their fate and it would all fall apart if Princess Karin fell. Amamo had already been defeated, so that body double could not rule in her place afterwards.

Which meant she would use everything she had available to her.

“Activate, Tsuchigumo!!”

She held the hammer up to her mouth like a microphone and used the muzzle to vibrate her own voice at a set frequency.

More than an explosive boom, the air screamed with a shockwave. Then the entire world was twisted around. No, the entire gas turbine power plant was struck from below and all the structures within – the smokestacks, the turbine building, etc. – began to collapse one after another.

The earth swelled up like it was a living creature.

Was this the “terrain effect” that Amamo specialized in and Princess Karin had learned from her?

(This isn’t just an artificial earthquake caused by stressing the crust with explosives.)

This was their secret technique which had been described as a dragon hidden in the earth. This was the ninja technique that had defeated Elite Ninjas Ouka and Hoozuki.

“The single…”

He heard a voice.

It belonged to Murakami Michihiko who had said he was going to defeat Princess Karin, ended up protecting her at the last second, and then became a path for his ally to step on in order to cut her down.

But.

None of that meant he was without courage.

Someone without that would never hesitate and struggle like he had.

“The visible single-molecule magnets are only the ignition! They’re actually used to move enough of the bedrock to compress the underground water!!”

He had worried, hesitated, agonized, and struggled, but he had finally gotten the words out.

He might as well have been telling Sugiyado to survive and stop the princess.

Sugiyado would have to take on that task. The consistency of the samurai spirit was found nowhere in the ninja world. Sugiyado Souha was familiar with a much messier form of sincerity, but that messiness was what made it so genuine.

(I see. So it’s the same as a diesel engine. The immense pressure on the underground water causes it to rapidly heat and the steam pushes up at the ground!!)

Dirt swelled up from the ground like a tower or great serpent more than 10m tall, but the very tip had latched onto one of the 2-wheeled mounts.

The rapid-vibration spear attached to the great bow was brought to the same height as Sugiyado.

“Tch!!”

He was stepping on Murakami Michihiko in midair to bring himself in striking range of Princess Karin. Jumping back after all that would be the height of folly. For one thing, the mount’s weapon was a projectile, so more distance would mean nothing in midair with no cover to hide behind.

So…

“Go!! Stop the princess!!”

“That’s…the plan!!”

He took another step.

He kicked off of Murakami Michihiko’s stomach to leap toward Princess Karin who was also in midair. He pictured it like slamming his shoulder at the lower stomach to lift her up. He was already too close even for a kunai.

But at this point, he doubted he could stop the Swift Foot from attacking even if he used Princess Karin as a shield.

He had just one aim.

“Gah!!”

His shoulder hit.

He slammed into the arms she had crossed to protect her internal organs.

Even she groaned from that and they were both flung out into the air. The momentum of his tackle caused him to spin vertically, altering the vector of his curving path.

Then the mass of tungsten steel was launched from the special stainless steel ultra-flexible bow. A direct hit from that could pierce the armor of the Empire’s six-legged mobile fortresses, but was nothing to fear if the targeting could not keep up. And bows all shared a certain trait: once they were used, it took some time to ready the next shot. They could not pull off machinegun-style rapid fire.

The shockwave pushed tumbling Sugiyado and Princess Karin’s paths apart.

But for ninjas who used projectiles, being too close meant greater risk. The great tension of a Western duel ruled the area.

“This isn’t over!!”

Princess Karin had been thrown out into the air at three or four stories up, but she had not lost the will to fight. Her junihitoe flew as she used the muzzle of her hammer like a microphone to convert her voice into ultrasonic waves.

That action gave a special command.

“Lock onto the designated target and attack, Tsuchigumo!!”

But they were up in the air.

Even if she could control the earth like a living creature, there would be a time lag before it reached them here.

That gave him time.

“New Sapporo Domain Substitute Lord Princess Karin.”

Sugiyado Souha had been oriented upside down, but he lightly stepped on some footing.

He used the side of a tall smokestack that had been collapsed when the ground swelled up.

He gathered strength in his knees using the springs that took the place of his ligaments and he readied a Fierce Fang once more.

And he spoke.

“Prepare yourself.”

He launched himself like an artillery shell and crashed into Princess Karin for a midair tackle.

While striking her with the bottom of his kunai’s grip.

### 9: Another

Princess Karin had been fully equipped as a kunoichi. And even if she was on the front line, she was still the domain’s princess. Below the thick junihitoe, she had to be wearing carbon nanotube bulletproof tights just in case. But the impact still reached her even if she did not bleed.

Amamo truly had learned the exact same techniques as Princess Karin to act as her body double.

At the last moment, Amamo had moved to protect her stomach.

The same happened here.

Princess Karin had moved to protect her internal organs, so Sugiyado had instead aimed for the side of her neck. Because even with full-body bulletproof tights, the neck was still hard to defend.

“Kah!?”

As well-trained as she was, she had preserved the slenderness of a sheltered young maiden so she could wield martial arts and sex appeal simultaneously. The muscles in her neck were not enough to fully brace against the impact.

Then they fell.

The two of them crashed into a few pipes along the way, but they finally hit the thin layer of artificial snow covering the surface.

The impact knocked Sugiyado’s breath from his lungs.

The gas turbine power plant appeared to reach its limit at the same time. The broken pipes and turbine building exploded one after another and the entire place was soon wrapped in smoke and flame. He was not immediately shredded by the Swift Foots scanning the area because those obstacles obstructed their cameras and sensors. The heat and metal powder would be damaging the permeation sensors as well.

His spine protested.

He tried to get up, but his body refused to move, like a gear was jammed.

(I may have pushed myself too hard.)

He had known this was how the ninja world worked, but he had done it anyway the instant he saw what had happened to Ouka. He still could not get used to seeing his allies hurt. He could no longer get after those four for what they did last time. He was starting to think his own powerful emotions had infected them without him noticing.

“Heh…heh heh.”

He heard some weak laughter from nearby.

Princess Karin had been caught on a waterproof sheet where she swayed in midair, but the impact still would have been considerable. She lacked his spine handicap, but it would still be a bit before she could get up.

“Is that all you’ve got? Well, it was decently entertaining at least, insolent fool.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But you misread the big picture. We win this one.”

“What were you even trying to do in this northern land? You secured largescale power generation with the underground linear motor train network and you used that to bring the Hokkaido Area’s defense system back online…but that’s a means, not an end.”

She did not answer him.

She knew her death was close and she knew she had no future, but she still kept her secrets. She had not only learned just enough to fill the role. She was a true ninja leader of the Stonewalls.

Just like former Hidden One Sugiyado Souha who led his four students.

(Is it finally over?)

Sugiyado sighed while collapsed on the power plant’s snowy road.

Even with the many explosions erupting from the gas turbine power plant itself, he would be found by the troops or Swift Foots if he stayed here. And even if they left him there, the flames and smoke would reach him. At this point, there no miracle that would allow him to escape unscathed.

Kuhou Ouka.

Hanasawa Bara.

Nantou Hoozuki.

Shizukuma Asagao.

He was glad they were safe. That much he was proud of. His own life had hit a dead end, but he had left his mark on the world. He could let his students handle the rest.

Hearing someone stepping on the shallow snow, he looked over from the ground.

“Murakami Michihiko.”

“…”

He did not interpret this as help having arrived.

In fact…

“If you want Princess Karin, then take her with you. That’s what you came here to do, isn’t it?”

“Are you sure?”

“I had two objectives: repay that old man and rescue Ouka. Whatever Princess Karin’s plan was, I ended it here. If you two disappear now, it should make some waves inside the castle, but it won’t bring any more chaos to New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area.”

Silence followed.

That man’s priorities never changed, but he could not help but hesitate. Sugiyado had to smile. That was dangerous thing for a ninja, but it made him a good person. It reminded him of the old man who had looked after him in the special prison despite having no logical reason to do so.

“Go.”

“I’m sorry.”

Murakami Michihiko gently picked up the junihitoe princess while she swayed in the waterproof sheet like a hammock and then he bowed.

Without a sound, the ninja turned away from Sugiyado and vanished.

Before long, Sugiyado heard a heavy mechanical clanking through the smoke. A Swift Foot’s cameras or sensors must have detected him. There was nothing at all he could do.

(Did that repay you in some small way, old man?)

He started to shut his eyes on the snowy ground.

But he stopped when he heard a piercing roar of destruction. He knew that was the result of the giant Swift Foot’s composite armor being sliced through and its slimmed-down steamroller body being chopped apart, but he still nearly lost himself in the beauty of the music it created.

Someone had dropped from above and sliced vertically through the machine.

The two halves of the silhouette shifted out of place before fully collapsing.

(That was a military sword that uses an arc discharge to pierce composite armor.)

That was an unusual weapon for a ninja.

It was not even Shogunate technology. It had been given a Japanese design to match the kunoichi outfit – or maybe it had the kind of “Western” design that only existed in this country, like a visual version of wasei-eigo – but that “move in close and hit them with a powerful heat source” style of military technology was the specialty of the Kingdom.

“Oh? Giving up already, instructor? Yet you insist on saving others and keeping them in this world whether they like it or not.”

He recognized the voice.

It did not belong to Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, or Asagao.

This was another kunoichi who had possessed extraordinary power.

Her ninja outfit resembled a sleeveless kimono, but the sides were left wide open, making it look something like a surgical gown. Her long black hair had two distinctive bits tied to on either side of her head. She had a body as curvy as Bara’s, but her sex appeal was so decadent it seemed to be rotting.

In other words…

“Oniyuri?”

## 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.”

### 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…

“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…

“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…

“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.”

## Epilogue

“The Raging Gale sky fortress made an emergency landing on the outskirts of the New Sapporo Domain. It was in an empty field, so there was no damage to the surface.”

“I see,” said Sugiyado.

The interior looked a lot like a chain café, but it was actually an ordinary convenience store’s eat-in area kept separate from the 1st floor store. There were plenty of more fashionable places in New Sapporo Domain, but there was one thing he refused to compromise on as an instructor.

That thing was an incredibly common snack food.

A convenience store was the best choice when you were in search of some Happy Churn.

Ouka sat in the counter seat by the 2nd story window. Instead of her cutting-edge ninja outfit, she wore a fluffy sweater and a miniskirt. But instead of relaxing, she sat straight up like an honor student who had just been called on in class.

“It was apparently designed so it can’t take off again under its own power once it lands. It needs special equipment like multiple single-use rockets if it’s ever going to be made airborne again. The landing has been taken as an effective surrender, so Princess Karin and the rest of New Sapporo Domain intend to deal with them.”

“How are things regarding Princess Karin?” asked Sugiyado while munching on the oval snacks.

Ouka gave him some well-made tea she got from the store’s dispenser. But she was also pouting her lips a bit, perhaps because she had been left down on the surface.

But she was professional enough to not let that get in the way of her report, which was charming.

“New Sapporo Domain Lord Hatsunaga should recover soon.”

There was no pause in Ouka’s response.

There was even a hint of hope there.

“But it was Princess Karin who commanded New Sapporo Domain all this time and resolved the Brown Bears problem. The Brown Bears were the result of a policy approved during Hatsunaga-sama’s time as lord, so this is being seen as the daughter cleaning up the mess her father made. This has proven her ability and increased her influence.”

“…”

People were taking an awfully relaxed view of this when the entire city could have been destroyed depending on where the Raging Gale had fallen.

But Sugiyado did not look down on the people for that view.

It only proved that Princess Karin and the other domain officials were doing their part to keep unease from spreading.

“The Brown Bears incident was a policy failure that threatened New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area as a whole. Princess Karin apparently intends to publicly announce what happened. I imagine Hatsunaga-sama will choose to retire and claim it is to assist his recovery.”

“This is about Abashiri’s special prison. The other Hokkaido Area domains aren’t going to approve.”

“The leaders might not, but they can’t avoid the displeasure of their people. This is too much to placate the people by reducing taxes.”

So in a way, the Brown Bears were getting what they wanted. And Princess Karin hadn’t lost the “puppy” she hid with her thick junihitoe, but it wasn’t all good news.

“The Raging Gale and all equipment aboard are being confiscated as evidence.”

“Including the Brown Bears’ teacher? Including Lignum Vitae?”

“The metronome will be treated as evidence for a while, but it will not be destroyed.”

Ouka stopped there.

An awkward air set in, like a student standing in front of the blackboard but finding she couldn’t write the answer to the problem.

“About New Sapporo Domain’s luxury residential district…the area full of second houses. The armor plating that fell there was found with evidence of certain components having been removed. And there is no sign of Ekaterina of the Cyrillic Empire or Oniyuri of the ABC’s Kingdom.”

“There’s no point in pursuing them. And it isn’t your fault. They aren’t the type to screw up bad enough to be found.”

He meant that to make her feel better, but Ouka puffed her cheeks out a bit. Their ranking as ninjas was apparently more important than he thought.

“Hmph.”

“Hey, my Happy Churn!?”

“These are off limits for now.”

She slid the snack food over from the counter seat.

He wanted to snatch them back, but Happy Churn was fragile. Fighting over them here might cause them to break apart and that was about the saddest thing he could imagine.

He did his best to feign calm as he asked another question.

“You said ‘for a while’. What happens once the trial is over?”

“The plan is to build a museum and keep the Lignum Vitae on display there. The circumstances leading to the Brown Bears’ creation will be accurately recorded and displayed to the public like something from a wax museum. That way the harmful policies of New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area as a whole will not be forgotten.”

“Will that change things at Abashiri too?”

“Princess Karin has decided to eliminate the entire behind-the-scenes system there, including the Brown Bears. Even if that means ignoring every message sent by Edo who would prefer this is settled more discreetly. It is hard to say how much of an effect this will have. If the rot has reached the very foundation of the special prison, it could mean eliminating the entire prison and distributing the prisoners around the country.”

“…I see.”

Whatever the case, the incident was over.

Edo’s Tenshukaku had only just gotten back on their feet after Oniyuri’s massacre and they were about to be shaken to their core again. But that was none of Sugiyado’s concern.

He had repaid his debt to that old man and eliminated all of his regrets. He had no real reason to remain in the newly peaceful New Sapporo Domain.

“Ouka.”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“I have one last question. Am I officially dead?”

“Um.”

The twintails girl’s shoulders tensed.

Sugiyado had been tentatively considered dead after Abashiri’s special prison was engulfed in flames, but he needed to know for sure.

Ouka bit her lip before finally confessing.

“It wasn’t possible. The fire has been extinguished and all of the bodies recovered from the burned areas have been identified. They were checking dental and genetic records, so I doubt they would overlook you.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said Sugiyado Souha without any real emotion.

Take care of that kid.

That had been his promise to the old man. If it got out a prisoner had escaped Abashiri special prison, walked around like a free man, and participated in an incident affecting the entire Hokkaido Area, it would be a major blow to Princess Karin who Michihiko was trying to support. That made this a problem he had to deal with.

“Wait, Sensei. You aren’t planning on returning to Abashiri, are you?”

She sounded like she was trying to talk him out of it, but he also sensed a dangerous mood in the air.

He detected the sort of determination that would lead her to do just about anything if it would protect her teacher.

And not just her. Bara, who was wearing a red dress and sipping coffee at another table, Hoozuki, who was working with loose leaf paper and a highlighter, and Asagao, who was on her phone, all suppressed their voices.

But.

They wouldn’t be in this position if a single act of self-sacrifice would solve everything.

“Did you really think that would be enough to fix this? My recapture wouldn’t change the fact that I had broken out. My sacrifice wouldn’t save Princess Karin from scandal.”

This wasn’t a problem that could be solved with a ninja sword or shuriken.

They needed to dig deeper and erase some records.

(Honestly. There goes any chance of serving out my term and getting a second chance at an honest life.)

He sighed.

“Fine. The Brown Bears framed Murakami Michihiko for murder, right? I want to testify at his trial and have him found not guilty. Can you prepare to have me appear in court as a witness?”

“Um, uh. I can of course, but wouldn’t that still reveal that you broke out of prison?”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at her like she had come to school after summer break and said she had forgotten to do any of her homework.

The instructor taught her one of the most basic facts.

“Ever heard of witness protection? If an important witness in a ruthless organized crime case would be at risk for testifying, there is a system in place for hiding their identity. I testify in court, prove Murakami Michihiko’s innocence, and the Shogunate’s system erases my Sugiyado Souha identity from existence. …I hate to admit it, but this will also protect Princess Karin by avoiding the mass media and online news. And ninjas already have their identities erased from the official systems, so the job should be even easier than usual. That way I can be with you, but no one can ever find me.”

## Afterword

That was Kunoichis Volume 2.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Volume 1 ended with Sugiyado being sent to Abashiri, so this one had to be set in the Hokkaido Area. To emphasize that snowy setting, I made sure it was snowing regardless of season and went on to include a secret date and hot spring as a bit of fanservice.

The enemies were a Shogunate vulnerability inspector and the Stonewalls ninja group in charge of defending New Sapporo Domain.

With the change of setting, I also wanted to change the balance of power and interpersonal relationships, so in addition to the basic ninja vs. ninja battles, I had the temporary domain lord princess use her political power to attack Sugiyado.

In Volume 1, Instructor Sugiyado stopped his students’ incident with brute force, but this time he was the one who broke the rules while running around the Hokkaido Area to repay Murakami Shouzou who helped him out in prison.

Whether or not that was the right thing to do, this just shows that Sugiyado Souha’s teachings were at the base of Ouka and the others’ actions. What they did in Volume 1 may have been the result of him unintentionally infecting them with his sense of justice and duty.

I made the Stonewalls into ninjas who originated as a group of diggers who made mines and tunnels. Their weapons are more about what’s cool than what’s logical. Construction and digging equipment have a unique charm, don’t you think!? So this time I made a group that specializes in that.

I also wanted something in common between Murakami Michihiko and Princess Karin, which you can see in the throwing assistance by placing their basic metal weapon in a tube or using the muzzle like a flute to send orders to the Tsuchigumo.

I came up with the Brown Bears because I wanted a different way to show the series theme of teachers and students.

If you compare Ouka and Ootsumekusa or Sugiyado and Lignum Vitae, you should see how they are similar but also completely different. I thought it would be interesting if the enemies are the same deep down but took the exact opposite path.

I give thanks to my illustrator Tajima Ryuushi-san and to my editors, Miki-san, Nakajima-san, Yamamoto-san, and Mitera-san. I expect the all-white snow scenes were a challenge. Sorry for causing you so much trouble again.

And I give thanks to the readers. Saving cute girls isn’t the only form of justice!! So what did you think of this story of a boy fighting to keep the promise he made to a dying old man? Sugiyado Souha used cutting-edge gadgets, charged onto extreme battlefields, and managed to repay a debt the old-fashioned way. I am praying you can accept his way of lie.

And I will end this here.

Hidden One Oniyuri really does steal the scene whenever she appears, doesn’t she?

-Kamachi Kazuma

### 013. Prologue

Avoid the Tomb at all costs.

Life in Abashiri’s special prison is bad enough as it is, but being sent there is a death sentence.

“Hey, you still alive? Looks like they won’t have to amputate your feet to save you, but what are you trying to accomplish? Is a guy like you hoping to be a tragic heroine or something?”

When Sugiyado Souha smelled disinfectant alcohol, he realized he must be in the medical building.

He still could not feel anything below his ankles.

He used just his arms to grab at the metal pipe railing and sit up in the bed, eliciting an exasperated sigh from the old man seated next to the bed.

He recognized that prisoner.

That fellow prisoner.

“Boy, you were only just released from the medical building, yet here you are again. This is Abashiri. I thought I warned you to avoid the Tomb.”

“It’s not like I had a choice in the matter.”

“My point was to not get on the bad side of the guards.”

The Tomb was a solitary confinement cell used to punish prisoners who broke the rules. All heating was shut off in that inescapable room, but they apparently built a pathway for the icy air from outside to pass directly below the floor, so the walls and floor were so cold your skin would stick to them. If you carelessly tried to lie down, you would either get frostbite or freeze to death. The point was to keep the prisoner from getting any sleep by preventing them from lying on the floor or leaning against the walls.

But the old man did not make that big a deal out of it.

“Why would you intentionally antagonize the guards? With your skill, sneaking up to the person you want should be second nature to you.”

“…”

“Do you refuse to use those skills for personal reasons? That’s an impressive ideal, but it’s only required for people on active duty. It means nothing to us retried folks who had everything stripped from us before we were thrown in a cell here.”

Sugiyado sighed.

He wore a bright orange jumpsuit. His special fiber ninja outfit and tank-destroying air pressure kunais were a thing of the past.

“The doc said you have light frostbite. You got a long stay in the medical building when you arrived here with your legs broken, but that’s not happening this time. You’re here for a few days at most.”

“I am aware of that.”

“You need to make up your mind before you’re released again. No one’s going to praise you if you choose to accept needless punishment and no one’s going to blame you if take the easy way out. You weren’t given a death sentence, so enjoy your life here the best you can. If you don’t, you’ll lose your life for no good reason.”

The old man in an identical jumpsuit stood up from his chair and left the medical room.

(…)

Sugiyado sank into thought now that he was alone.

Kuhou Ouka.

Hanasawa Bara.

Nantou Hoozuki.

Shizukuma Asagao.

Those four kunoichis were his students.

As was Sagami Oniyuri.

He had needed to covertly end the incident that began with them stealing a modular nuclear reactor. He had just barely avoided the worst-case scenario, but that had required acting on his own in ways that qualified as betraying the Shogunate. He was not going to be pardoned. He had simply been paying the price needed to save those girls, so he was not at all unsatisfied with his current circumstances.

However.

(If I do eventually leave this place.)

He had been running with all his might.

But now that he had time to stop and reflect on things…

(Is there anything I want to do then? I’m honestly afraid that absolute freedom would feel like too much pressure.)

The silence of this place seemed to squeeze at his very soul. The emptiness sapped the heat from his core even more than the Tomb had.

He heard a gentle knock on the door and the master of this room walked in. During the previous incident, he had failed a makeshift parachute descent while carrying Oniyuri and ended up shattering both his legs. This middle-aged female doctor had been looking after him since then.

“Are you alone?”

“I had someone with me a moment ago.”

“That’s fine with me as long as they aren’t an uninvited guest. Now, let’s see how your legs are doing.”

He sat up and she circled toward his legs.

She pulled back the thin blanket that would have raised eyebrows in an ordinary home but was a luxury in Abashiri.

And Sugiyado Souha made an announcement without even looking her way.

“Bara, I know it’s you.”

He heard a sweet and bewitching breath of laughter.

“Oh, what a shame. I was hoping you were kind enough to go along with this farce of a honeymoon despite noticing.”

There was no noticeable transition.

“The next thing he knew” was the only way he could describe it.

The middle-aged woman with somewhat loose skin standing in front of him was now an 18-year-old girl with her long red hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls and with her bright and curvy body adorned by an Oiran-style shoulder-baring kimono. She accentuated her large chest to a gratuitous extent, but she did not stop there. She retained an unnatural innocence at the center of that top-tier seduction, so she seemed second to none in the field of kunoichi sex appeal.

She was Hanasawa Bara.

A set of high-power coilguns known as Serpent Monster was woven into her hair and she excelled at disguises and diversions.

She held the position of Elite Ninja, the highest of the Shogunate’s officially acknowledged ranks.

And.

She was one of the students Sugiyado Souha had once trained over the internet.

“Why are you here?”

“Make no mistake here, Sensei. I did not come rushing in here because you had collapsed. We have been here from the beginning. That means Ouka and Hoozuki too.”

The bed springs creaked.

Bara had climbed up onto the bed on her arms and legs with a feline litheness. She was now straddling his legs while he sat up.

She rubbed against his chest and whispered to him.

“You look so lonely in here, so if there is anything at all you would like, just ask. It must be so boring in here with nothing but other men. Just say the word and I will show you the kunoichi techniques you had me trained in. I won’t hold anything back.”

He did not bat an eye as he responded.

“Do you really think that’s enough to distract me from the question of the real doctor’s wellbeing?”

“Now there’s a scary thought. But to give away the trick, it’s actually a shockingly peaceful way to take someone’s place.”

She looked like someone who had set up a major prank only for it to fail. The pouting lips were childish, but she was still up on the bed practically lying on top of her teacher.

Some beads of sweat must have soaked into her hair because a sweet aroma rose from those ringlet curls and her large chest.

“Sensei, when will you be coming back?”

“When my sentence is complete.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. If you want, we could easily get you out of this boring place.”

“Bara.”

“So what method would you like? A complete set of documents with official Shogunate approval? Or do you just want to vanish from your cell in the middle of the night? We won’t force you to do anything. You allowed this power to blossom within us, so think of this as using what you left in our care. You only need to tell us the method you prefer.”

“Bara.”

He repeated her name but more forcefully this time.

The usual mixture of bewitching and mischievous child vanished from her face and she instead had the look of a girl fearing rejection.

“It is true I gave you the skills you need to get through life. I gave you what you need to take on the world’s cruelties and use them to your own benefit, but that wasn’t so I could use you as tools down the line.”

“…”

“You’ll do anything for me? Do I really need to repeat myself, Bara? I’m imprisoned here because of what I did to save you four after you let someone trick you into doing their bidding.”

“But…”

“You said you’re not the only one in here, right? Then pass my message onto them.”

He had to be clear about this one point.

He had left it more up in the air in the past and that had led to problems.

It might sound coldhearted.

It might trample on the feelings she was offering him.

But he could not compromise on this.

No matter what.

“This is my life, so please stop trying to take control for your own benefit.”

The frostbite was not that bad, so feeling returned to his feet after they were warmed. Once he could walk on his own again, he returned to the general prison.

That critical old man greeted him.

“You really are a dumbass, aren’t you? You were granted a stay in that ‘hotel’, so you should’ve thrown a fit until they let you at least stay the night.”

The walls were made of cold, heavy stone and the metal bars increased the oppressive atmosphere further. Abashiri’s special prison had a square cloister design with a central atrium up to the third floor. The cells on the outside walls had small (but bar-covered) windows, but the inner cells did not even have that. It was said a lot of prisoners had their psyche destroyed by the oppressive isolation more than the biting cold.

The Tomb that Sugiyado had been thrown into did not exist on the officially-released layout of the prison.

He could not be certain since he had been blindfolded and earplugged, but he was pretty sure it was located even further in than the inner cells.

“Your cell is just the way you left it. If they thought you would die from that, the other prisoners would have rushed in to pilfer your stuff.”

“I didn’t bring anything much with me.”

“You moron, a struggle over a single wire can lead to a death here. Even though no one actually has the guts to try a serious jailbreak or to attack a guard.”

The old man in the standardized jumpsuit was pushing a mop along the floor, but he usually stayed in the medical building. He was part of the privileged class who were cut off from this miniature version of the criminal underworld and were actually given comfortable rooms and nutritious food. In exchange, they were supposedly isolated in a padded room and not allowed to use the exercise area or pool, but that did not seem to be the case with him. He freely moved between the prison and the medical building, getting the best of both worlds.

Simply put, he was a model prisoner.

He did not cause the guards any trouble and he did not influence the power balance among the prisoners. He was not just well behaved. He would have been chewed up and spat out if that were the case. People seemed to ignore him like the weeds on the side of the road, but he had actually discovered a safe zone where no one ever actually trod.

And despite being a model prisoner, he never received any visitors.

He had the same scent as Sugiyado.

He was hiding some kind of skill. Instead of lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike, it felt like hiding his skill was simply second nature to him. Sugiyado had no intention of asking about the man’s identity, but the man had the dampness of a shady area that never saw the light of the sun. And this was the professional kind of dampness that silently ruined the enemy army’s powder.

“What’s your plan?” asked the old man while using the mop to prop himself up.

“For what?”

“You aren’t going to antagonize the guards and get yourself thrown into the Tomb twice in one day again, are you? Like I said in the medical building, you have a good enough eye to easily curry the favor of the VIPs without drawing the attention of the fine gentlemen with back tattoos.”

“…”

“You wouldn’t have given up the comfort of the medical building if you weren’t planning to reach a compromise with this building’s rules, right? Then think about how you should behave. There are only two ways to survive in here: rely on the guards who love wielding power over the rest of us, or find a place for yourself in the marble pattern of underworld territories the prisoners have created. My guess is you’re innocent yourself, boy. Although you also don’t seem the type to abandon all your techniques for someone who has done something wrong.”

The old man was right.

To survive here, you had to learn the rules and make sure you never stepped out of line.

Sugiyado had failed to do that because he had no vision for his future.

He did not know what kind of life he wanted to live.

“You don’t need to bottle it up inside.” The old man sounded carefree. “Save that restraint and patience for when you’re on a job. Now that you’re behind bars, you’ve been freed from that burden. You’re free here, so you don’t have to stubbornly carry all of that baggage with you.”

“…”

“Enjoy your sentence. You might have fallen into the filth at the depths of the earth, but it’s your life to live.”

The general cells were shared by two to four prisoners each. The solitary confinement cells might sound more comfortable since you had it to yourself, but that kind of isolation for days on end was enough to break even the bodyguards who served criminal organizations. The size of the rooms was identical, but these cells were very different from a student apartment where manga and your phone were within arm’s reach.

Sugiyado was lying on the thin mattress sitting on the floor of a solitary confinement cell.

And then…

“Sensei.”

“…”

“I know you heard that. Answer me.”

He slowly sighed.

There did not appear to be any gaps at all between the bricks of the thick walls, but one of the blocks was pulled out from the other side.

“You too, Asagao? The four of you are the Shogunate’s trump cards, so what are you doing here?”

Would anyone have believed him if he said an 11-year-old girl had broken into his cell?

Abashiri was the Shogunate’s maximum security prison, so if she had worked out a viable jailbreak route and reported it to the Shogunate, she would have been immediately recruited to some important position. Yet if Sugiyado went to the guards and said there was a girl in his cell’s wall, they would assume he had completely lost it and finally send him to the medical building for good.

“At our level, we’re allowed some selfish actions. Although I feel like they had some greater purpose for sending us Elite Ninjas to this northern land. Moving us here as game pieces has put someone in check.”

“…”

“Sensei, if you keep ignoring me, I’ll have to take drastic measures. For example, I brought you some Happy Churn, but I might just eat it all myself while you can only helplessly watch on.”

That one shook his resolve pretty bad, but he was her instructor. He could not set a bad example for his student.

“Crunch, crunch. Hm, I should have brought a drink.”

“Wait, no, Asagao! Please stop! That sound…that smell…”

“These things are a real pain to eat. Your fingers get all sticky no matter where you touch them. Wipe, wipe. How are you supposed to eat them, Sensei?”

“Don’t just wipe off your fingers! Licking off that tasty powder is one of the best parts!!”

Most likely, the Shogunate had not sent Asagao and the others to the Hokkaido Area because they were needed there. Instead, they must have known those four would be going there anyway, so they decided to find a way to make it useful.

“Hey, Sensei,” said Asagao through the wall. “Don’t you want to hear about the new order in Edo?”

“It’s none of my concern. I’m just a prisoner.”

“Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.”

“Nhhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Here, you like licking off the powder, right? Well, it’s all over my fingers, so have at it. Nee hee hee. Don’t you want some of that Happy Churn flavor?”

The girl’s small hand poked out from the hole in the wall and tempted the ninja like a sea anemone.

It was time for Sugiyado Souha to be a man by biting his lip and resisting.

Asagao must not have understood just how psychologically painful this torture was, but he was starting to hallucinate Happy Churns floating around his cell.

“Well, I’m not going to force anything onto you like Bara and Ouka want to. You can do things your way and I’ll just come pay you a visit whenever I’m feeling lonely.”

“That isn’t how this works.”

“Hey, I’m showing restraint here. The others are being far less reasonable.” He saw her round eye wink through the dark hole in the wall. “More importantly, Sensei, you’ve found a pretty impressive friend in here, haven’t you? The way that old man carries himself is weird.”

“He’s probably from the same world as us. There are plenty of paths to being a ninja. Some are bandits or pirates given government approval, some are miners hired for their tunnel digging skills, some are swordsmen who were kicked out of their school for breaking the rules, some are firework makers who know how to handle explosives, and some are special forces specifically trained by the Inner Palace or the Shogunate. He’s probably one of the varieties we’re less familiar with.”

“What’s your guess?”

“Song.”

It was not clear what he meant from that word alone, but Asagao responded with the tone of someone trying to decide on a skirt color in the fitting room.

“Hmm, I know what you mean, but I don’t think that’s quite it. He seems more like me.”

11-year-old Asagao was not suited for direct combat and she was never meant to battle the armored samurai who had become absurd collections of weapons with mechanized armor irreversibly fused to their bodies. She had learned to make use of other skills instead: infiltration, disturbance tactics, morale reduction, forensics, and even cyber attacks. You could say she had mastered every form of information warfare.

That little monster whispered quietly from the hole in the bricks.

“Don’t let him affect you too much, Sensei. In some ways, a lonely old man inspires protective instincts even more so than a lost child or abandoned kitten. I use my position as a child as a weapon and he’s clearly butting in on my territory. We know he isn’t just an ordinary old man, so who knows what he’ll inject you with if you let your guard down. It won’t hurt to remain cautious at all times.”

“Asagao.”

“No, you’re the one that needs a lecture right now. Do not forget that the top of the Shogunate, for whatever reason, allowed us to visit Abashiri. That’s four Elite Ninjas. Not ordinary foot soldiers and not their armored samurai; the best of their ninjas who specialize in solving problems that cannot come to light. There must be something more going on here. Something serious enough to grant us our selfish request if it would place some of their strongest pieces on the board to keep an eye on things.”

“…”

“And the most important thing to remember here is that I, our expert in all things information warfare, have come all the way here yet I still haven’t discovered what that something is. We’re talking about expert level camouflage here, so isn’t it reasonable to keep an eye on every fellow ninja you’ve seen here, Sensei?”

Prisons were home to many different plans and interests.

Godfathers who ran a giant organization from behind bars, gold-egg-laying geese who had placed themselves behind bars for their own safety, ‘hotel workers’ who made sure they could work from the inside to create a comfortable place for any of their organization’s people who ended up behind bars – and who would make sure those people did not spill the beans about anything important – and more.

If those were like shining suns, then there were also plenty of planets revolving around them because they either wanted to help those suns escape from the prison or who wanted to kill them.

A prison was a clockwork device made from a complex arrangement of countless gears. Everything had a large or a small role in someone’s plans and anyone who failed to pick up on that when they arrived would be cast out of the giant device as a faulty part. Everything had a role because everything that did not was removed to trim the fat.

Prisons were meant to rehabilitate people so they could return to society, but the exact opposite tended to happen. Even an amateur pickpocket would become immersed in the rules of the criminal underworld after spending just a month there. Because there was no escape and they could not survive otherwise.

“I hear you got thrown in the Tomb again. That’s supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime sorta punishment, but you’ve made yourself into a damn regular.”

In the cafeteria, the model prisoner of an old man spoke to Sugiyado in obvious exasperation.

The food was hard bread and bean soup. It was only meant to provide the bare minimum of sustenance needed to stay alive. The bread was too hard to bite through unless it was soaked in the soup first.

Sugiyado ate his meal in silence, so the old man sighed across from him.

“The guards are actually starting to panic, you know? They’ve used the Tomb so often this month your absence on the paperwork is looking pretty noticeable. If they get hit with a surprise inspection from Central right now, a whole buncha illegal practices might come to light and they don’t want that.”

“See, I’m helping.”

“Good grief. You really are a ninja through and through, boy. This prison is a public institution managed by the Shogunate. Did your love of justice and public service get the better of you when you saw how corrupt the government workers here are?”

Sugiyado did not give a clear answer.

He simply let the bland bean soup soak into a piece of bread he tore off.

“You’re not doing a great job of keeping a low profile either, old man. Hanging around me is only going to cost you points.”

“Probably so, but to hell with it. No one ever comes to visit me, so I’m bored out of my mind. Life is nothing without a little excitement.”

“…”

“Sorry if you don’t like it, but every kid your age reminds me of my grandson. I thought I did a decent job of looking after him once my son and his wife disappeared, but that little bastard hasn’t come to see me even once after I was cuffed.”

A prison was a giant clockwork device made from a complex arrangement of countless gears, but that also meant driving a single wedge into a choice location could bring the entire thing to a halt. They had tried their best to remove any obstacles like that, but Sugiyado Souha was different. The risk he posed could not be measured based on how hard he was, so he could not be destroyed just by blindly applying force from the outside.

A wild rampage was not the only way to take action.

Intentionally taking an inferior position could sometimes work to express yourself in a way that shook an institution to the very foundation.

The old man seemed to understand that.

“But be careful. Even the scum they hire as guards have families. When they’re in a bind, they’ll all of a sudden remember what it means to be righteous. People like that will escalate things endlessly if it will protect something they care about and don’t forget that you are the one who is threatening that something. So be careful. If they panic, who knows how far they’ll go to cover up what they’ve done.”

“Sugiyado,” called a deep voice.

Sugiyado looked back from his chair and saw two large guards walking across the cafeteria toward him.

“#1090, Sugiyado Souha! We need to discuss your lifestyle. Come with us!!”

That was the least specific topic of discussion Sugiyado had ever heard. They could try to detain a Martian using that one. The old man quietly moved away from the boy while leaving some advice in his ear.

“What did I tell you? They’re here to silence you. Sending you to the comfortable medical building was meant to placate you. Since that failed, they’re going to try threats and violence. Tread very carefully.”

They tugged on his arm to force him up from the chair. They did not care in the slightest that he still had more than half his paltry meal left. Then they shoved on his back to get him moving toward the cafeteria’s exit.

A moment later, a loud explosion and shockwave shook the room.

Since one of the walls had crumbled, dust filled the cafeteria much like a cumulonimbus cloud. The shockwave slammed into Sugiyado’s back, so he was thrown to the floor along with the two guards.

(An explosion!?)

It had not been aimed at him.

It had come from behind. Someone, either from the outside or inside, had broken through the cafeteria wall. He could hear a lot of yelling and shouting over the loud ringing in his ears. Order had entirely collapsed. No one was following the rules set up by the jailed godfathers and the prisoners.

“Ow.”

He heard an almost childish voice from right next to him.

The guard had collapsed onto his side and was curled up on the floor.

There was also something wrong with his silhouette, especially at the arm.

“Ahhh, it hurts.”

“A table leg flew over and hit you, didn’t it? Let me see your coat and baton. I’ll use those for a makeshift splint, so don’t move. You won’t die of shock as long as you don’t move the broken bone around too much, so you can still survive this. This is all I can do for you.”

“No, wait. Don’t leave me behind. I’ll do anything…anything.”

Sugiyado did not have time for anything more.

He heard something whoosh through the air.

“Kh.”

The dust kept him from seeing anything at all, but he still moved. He swung his head to the side to dodge the glint of a blade and then pulled the plastic radio from the collapsed guard’s hip. He aimed the bottom of that at the assassin and slammed it into their hipbone, which was the most difficult spot to dodge.

“Gyah!?”

Bone and nerve pain were unique, so training was not enough to build up a resistance. The person hopped up like they had been hit by a stun gun and Sugiyado used that opening to sweep their feet out from under them, sending their back slamming into the hard floor. He doubted a pro would be acting alone, so he stole the weapon form the dazed masked assassin’s hand, instantly assessed its heft, reach, and balance, and then swung it horizontally. Another enemy stepped forward to help their fallen friend, so the blow caught them more on the side of the neck than the face, knocking over their entire body.

Once both had been taken out, Sugiyado looked down at the weapon he held.

It was neither a sword nor a gun.

(A collapsible shovel?)

“Sensei!”

He gave another horizontal swing of the shovel, but stopped partway through.

The next person to appear through the thick cloud of dust was a middle-school-aged girl with her long chestnut hair worn in twintails. She made no attempt to hide her cutting-edge ninja outfit or her vertically-stacked double-barrel hunting gun called Midnight Tempest.

“Ouka? Just to be sure, you aren’t here on a Shogunate mission, are you?”

“Well, um, no. I’m not.”

This was Abashiri’s special prison which boasted the Shogunate’s best security, but it turned out his students and some other group of ninjas had infiltrated the place.

“Understood. Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself. Your gun would leave signs of your presence too easily, so you stay put and-”

“No, that’s not my point. Sensei, uh, over there.”

She did not seem quite sure what to say, like a scolded child desperately trying to calm their parent’s anger.

Then Sugiyado noticed it too.

The initial explosion had occurred behind the boy while he was leaving the cafeteria and it had not been targeting him. The later attack on him must have been a chance encounter in order to eliminate the unexpected pro who happened to be in the combat area.

So.

Who had been the true target of these people who had gone as far as using explosives to force their way into the Shogunate’s max security special prison?

“Old man.”

Asagao had said he was not just an ordinary old man.

Sugiyado himself had thought the man was from a different branch of ninjas.

“Old man!!”

He parted the dust to search for the old man and found a figure collapsed on the floor along with the splintered table and chairs. The old man in a prison jumpsuit was lying face up and a well-forged piece of steel glittered where it was buried deep into his chest and gut.

“A cross shuriken? And it’s been given a rough-skinned surface.”

Just like how racing swimsuits eliminated resistance in the water, the texture of a projectile’s surface could greatly alter its speed and trajectory.

However…

“Ha…ha ha. Killed by a ninja weapon I created myself. Oh, the irony.”

The old man apparently lacked the strength to even hold a hand to his wound.

Ouka crouched down to inspect him and then looked back at Sugiyado with a complicated look on her face. She apparently had enough tact to not actually shake her head right in front of the dying old man.

“But that’s not so big a deal. The inventors of deadly tools for torture or execution are often killed by their own creations, so that I can bear. But it’s more than that.”

“…”

“Curse that brat. This explains why he hasn’t even sent me a letter. He must have gotten himself caught up in some kinda trouble. …I made this shuriken for my grandson, you see.”

Ouka gasped.

If she thought this meant he had been killed by his own blood relative, she still had some learning to do.

A ninja never left any evidence behind. Throwing a shuriken and leaving it was an absolute last resort much like scattering caltrops, so it was only done when you were losing. In this one-sided surprise attack using explosives, the attacker had held an overwhelming advantage, so it was hard to imagine they would rely on this kind of “last resort” from the get-go. There were ninjas like Hoozuki that favored shurikens, but he made sure she always kept track of how many she had launched and where she had launched them. That was of course so she could collect them later on. It was unthinkable to just leave one conspicuously stabbed into your primary target like this.

Which left only one possibility.

“Old man, do you have any idea who would have left this ‘business card’? That is, who would want to frame your grandson for killing you!? He’ll be in serious trouble at this rate!!”

“Don’t get involved.”

However.

The old man found the words even as his breathing grew shallow.

“Boy, your life is yours to live. Use your skill for yourself. Don’t worry. My grandson’s a ninja too. He only ran away because the boring work of an underworld craftsman wasn’t for him. He lives in this world of constant deception as much you or me, so no matter what might happen, this isn’t any of your business.”

“I owe you for all the help you gave me here. I can’t leave that debt unpaid.”

“…”

“Don’t you want to do something for your grandson? You clearly care about him enough to use your specialized skills to make a weapon for him even after he abandoned the family business, so tell me what I can do! Tell me!!”

“Sapporo. New Sapporo Domain.”

He could barely get the words out.

In the very end, this was all Sugiyado managed to get out of him.

“Take care of that kid.”

Those were his final words.

But his death was not met by silence.

Several more explosions occurred elsewhere and fires were blazing. The attackers were likely spreading the damage across the prison so it was harder to tell who they had been after. That meant this violence was entirely meaningless.

Sugiyado could hear the roar of flames consuming oxygen drawing closer.

First he saw black smoke, then the firefly-like embers, and finally heat and flames bursting in through the exit.

“Sensei!!”

All of this would be blamed on the old man’s grandson.

The tool so carefully crafted to protect that boy’s life would be used as evidence to frame him.

It was like spitting in the face of the already dead man.

“We need to get out of here. Stay here and you can’t save anyone!!”

“Ouka, I can’t do that. I was given a guilty verdict, so I will leave this information with you four. I’ll search out any connections I can find from within the prison. Yes, I can see if anyone was surreptitiously taken to an unnatural safe zone just before the explosions.”

“During a natural disaster, all the cells are unlocked and the prisoners are temporarily freed to keep them alive. So!!”

His student took drastic measures.

She spread her arms in front of him as if preparing to raise them in a cheer, but then she climbed on top of him.

He did not have time to feel the girly warmth and softness of her skin.

His spine felt funny at 5kg and exploded with pain at 10kg.

“Gah!!!???”

“Sorry, Sensei, but we’re going!!”

To make up for an old injury, he had bolts in his spine and springs to replace the ligaments in his legs, so he now felt excruciating pain and had trouble breathing whenever he was burdened with too great a weight.

While he convulsed on the floor like he had been hit in the back with a stun gun, the Elite Ninja kunoichi lifted him up over her shoulder and easily parted the black smoke to reach the exit.

A panicked scene opened up before their eyes, but Ouka used the veil of smoke to hide her conspicuous appearance and left the thick concrete building without anyone spotting her.

No.

She did more than that.

“Pant, pant.”

When the twintailed girl finally lowered her instructor in exhaustion, they were not even in the outdoor exercise area.

They were outside the tall wall surrounding the entire prison grounds.

“Ouka.”

“Every day since you were imprisoned, it’s felt wrong to me that someone like you is trapped in there.”

She wiped the sweat from her brow and gave him a mischievous smile.

Annoyingly enough, she had not planned this and had simply taken advantage of the situation. Anyone who did not know better might have suspected she caused the explosions herself.

She really was a ninja.

And Sugiyado Souha had no one to blame but himself since he had trained her to be like this.

“But now you’re a free man, Sensei. They have a hard enough time confirming identities at the scenes of ordinary fires and Abashiri holds a ridiculous number of people since it’s the country’s largest special prison. It’ll take the guards a while to notice you’re missing.”

“Is that so?”

“Asagao can make you a new ID, so you can go wherever you want.”

He let out a gentle sigh.

The time had come to switch his train of thought as a ninja.

“If I’m free, then I’m free to do whatever I want. Even if that means getting to the bottom of this incident and taking revenge on that old man’s behalf.”

“Um, uh.”

Ouka sounded hesitant. She must have only now realized that life in that prison had not been pure misery for Sugiyado. She had only made up her mind after the explosion, but she had still taken advantage of it. With four Elite Ninjas there, couldn’t they have detected the attack in advance? Couldn’t they have stopped it if they had not been so focused on their own desires? She was probably afraid he would get after her for that reason.

But she was wrong.

In the end, it was Sugiyado’s fault the old man had died. He had been by his side all that time and the old man had helped him out in so many ways. He had spoken with the man so often, so if he had only asked, he may have been able to learn more about the old man’s situation. Even if that meant using his ninja conversational and negotiation skills to tear down the man’s mental barriers. Then he could have been ready for the attack when it came.

But he had not wanted to apply such cold logic and quantification to someone he considered a friend. That was the only reason he had not done that.

In the end, it had all been Sugiyado Souha’s decision.

He had the skills necessary, but he had chosen not to use them.

“Old man.”

The old man had told him not to get involved.

It was Sugiyado who had convinced him to make that final request concerning his grandson, so he could not pretend he had not heard it.

So.

Sugiyado Souha shut his eyes and called up his memory of the old man’s corpse left behind at the scene of the fire. Specifically, he recalled the nametag on the man’s prison jumpsuit.

Murakami Shouzou.

That strongest of ninjas, who had surpassed even the rank of Elite Ninja, opened his eyes with renewed resolve.

“A Hidden One is on the case, so you can rest in peace.”

### 014. Chapter 1

### 1: New Sapporo Domain

White snow was falling, but the sky above was blue and the sun was shining bright.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha pushed up his scarf a bit in the back seat of the off-road motorcycle called Countless Calamities. This slow-melting artificial snow was a type of environmental defensive policy. Its chill felt more like a mist shower than air conditioning when it hit his skin.

He wore a thin short-sleeved dress shirt over a black long-sleeved shirt plus baggy pants. And more to remain inconspicuous than to fight the cold, he wore a scarf around his neck and a soft down jacket.

Dressing heavily and carrying ample equipment was not always a plus for a ninja.

Especially in Sugiyado’s case since he had springs to replace the ligaments in his legs and bolts in his spine.

At 5kg, his back would feel funny. At 10kg, it would explode with pain.

That meant a single jacket could be a serious drain on his life. Carrying a lifeline or a first-aid kit would mean not carrying some other piece of equipment.

“The northernmost Wakkanai Domain has officially announced their intention to reinforce the Karafuto Route as a new Dejima. They hope to expand their role as a friendly economic contact point with the Cyrillic Empire and…”

“The Insightful Databank Thinktank has used their official social media account to indicate a problem with New Sapporo Domain’s power consumption, so Princess Karin, the Domain’s substitute ruler, has announced their intentions to spend more on renewable energy so that…”

“Hakodate Domain, the Hokkaido Area’s main contact point with Honshu, is concerned about a recent increase in petty crime by motorcycle travelers and they are considering increasing the lodging tax to drive down the number of tourists who…”

“Hoozuki.”

“Oh, sorry. If there’s a channel you want to watch, just say so, Sensei.”

Silver ponytail Hoozuki glanced into the back seat through the mirror while holding the off-road motorcycle’s handlebars and also lowering the volume of the 1seg TV app on the phone attached to the holder. Her ninja outfit was composed of a one-piece swimsuit, a number of synthetic belts, and wide-legged pants, so it looked a lot like a riding suit. The back was left wide open, so it was kind of embarrassing having to hold onto her from behind. Even though her entire body was covered by a thin, flesh-colored elastic material much like a figure skater.

“It would take less than an hour to get from one side of the Hokkaido Area to the other if we could only use their underground linear motor train.”

“That doesn’t do us any good when the entire train line was decommissioned in the name of defense. And don’t drive so fast, Hoozuki. We aren’t in that much of a hurry.”

The Hokkaido Area was currently divided into six domains.

The most urban of those was New Sapporo Domain. Unlike New Yokohama Domain where Sugiyado Souha had lived previously, it was surrounded by flat land in all directions and the primary roads were laid out on a grid by thorough urban planning. It had a population of 4.5 million. The central commerce and industry district covered a square of about 15km and farms too large to seem possible in Japan stretched out from there. Seeing it in person made it clear why this was the only place in the country to use airplanes to sow their crops’ seeds.

All of the Four Occupations could be found here: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants.

And even if they did get a lot of snow here, it was not the worst part of Japan in that regard, so it was not enough to bury a home. Thus, they were slower to invest in snow melting pipes and food supply shelters when compared to the Sea of Japan side of Honshu.

That was also why they could afford to use that unnatural artificial snow.

While not on the level of barbed wire or trenches, deep snow functioned as an obstacle to the feet of soldiers and the wheels of trucks. By intentionally creating areas of sludge, they could slow an enemy’s advance without pouring much effort into it themselves.

On the news, they often discussed meeting with other countries over a meal or establishing appeasement policies, but the truth was that outside forces were constantly trying to get at this locked-down country’s cutting-edge technology.

Due to the presence of the Karafuto Route and the Nakhodka Route, New Sapporo Domain functioned as a fortress defending Honshu from an invasion by the Empire. It was thought the battle would be fought in the Hokkaido Area since it was one of the archipelago’s vastest areas of land, so a lot of large weapons had been deployed outside the capital, including the armored samurai who were an inseparable fusion of human and machine.

The underground linear motor train mentioned before had been decommissioned because it was thought a network of tunnels connecting different points on the island would defeat the purpose of a defensive line on the surface. The tunnels had been reported filled with concrete.

Conflict with the Empire that ruled the Cyrillic region of the world was in a lull, but there was still a possibility of clashing with Eastern Europe just like they were at odds with Western Europe, North America, and South America. Two massive “metal bridges” extended diagonally up from the center of the giant farm, pointing outwards, in order to protect the Chitose Defense Airport which functioned as an airbase and a civilian airport. Needless to say, those “bridges” were in fact strategic antiaircraft lasers that were thought capable of intercepting ballistic missiles.

Some would find them reassuring, others would lament the fact that they were necessary to sleep at night.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm, hm, hmm.”

The girl with her long silver hair in a ponytail hummed to herself while climbing down from the off-road motorcycle she had parked on the curb. One’s skintight ninja outfit was generally meant to be hidden, but hers looked so much like a riding suit that she blended in without wearing much of anything over it.

The down jacket boy gave her a curious look as he set foot on the ground behind her.

“What has you in such a good mood, Hoozuki?”

“Nothing really. It’s just been too long since we’ve done this. …You could call this a secret date we can’t afford to let anyone find out about, couldn’t you? That’s my idea of a fun time. It’s what the kunoichi life is all about!”

“?”

“Hm, hm, hmm☆”

At any rate, they had made it into Sapporo.

Sugiyado was playing this by ear. He had to solve whatever problems Murakami Shouzou had been facing and save the grandson that old man had been so worried about as he died.

Sugiyado patted his down jacket to confirm the presence of the special ninja tools he had hidden in the sleeves and back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Those tools were air-pressure kunais that used nitrogen gas and the same concept as the tools that forced open crushed car doors. When the blade was opened up like a U-shaped tuning fork, they could even pry open a tank’s hatch. His equipment had been provided by his students.

“Sensei.”

Ouka and Asagao must have used a domestic flight because they had arrived earlier and were waving to the two new arrivals. Ouka was of course not wearing her cutting-edge ninja outfit in this crowd.

She was smiling over at him with chestnut twintails, a fluffy sweater, and a miniskirt (which she considered to be her killer outfit!!).

“We have prepared some hideouts and a full set of equipment in each. We set up four bases in total, so use whichever one is most convenient at any given time.”

“Four,” groaned Sugiyado, eliciting a laugh from Asagao, the bob cut girl in a white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt. (She apparently did not care that she was wearing her ninja outfit in public.)

“Don’t worry about which one you choose, Sensei. But if you never use one of the bases, the girl who set it up might just go cry in secret.”

That was not what he wanted to hear.

He recalled that standard practice with kunoichis was to always meet with them one-on-one when receiving a report on their spying duties. Because the possibility of jealousy-fueled conflict between the kunoichis was too high otherwise.

Ouka and Asagao began whispering to each other.

“(This is what I call paradise. A teacher and his student on a secret date in a romantic northern city? How can I not get excited about that? I hope we end up working together like this forever!)”

“(I know, Ouka. And his obligations here are entirely tied to that old man from the prison. Once he’s done with that, we’re free to start on our new harem life. With four of the Shogunate’s strongest kunoichis working at it, we’re bound to trap him in a sea of sex appeal this time.)”

He called out to those two to cut that extremely dangerous conversation short.

“Let’s review.”

He had gone to the effort of dismounting Hoozuki’s motorcycle. They already knew their destination, but it was important to share all basic information first. Think of it like syncing everyone’s clocks before a mission. It could not hurt to repeat yourself.

“Murakami Shouzou was probably a ninja who worked as a weapon craftsman within New Sapporo Domain. And someone wanted to eliminate him badly enough to attack Abashiri, the most secure prison in the country. They even used his own grandson’s shuriken to frame that relative for the crime.”

“We still haven’t managed to work out the identity of the ninjas you defeated, Sensei.” Ouka lightly waved her phone with a troubled look on her face. She must have had some kind of video saved on there. “They probably aren’t officially registered like we are. Calling them non-primary personnel sounds nice and all, but it looks more like local thugs were given government equipment and made to fight. That couldn’t have been meant to last long, so they were effectively made to be disposable.”

“Tch. And I bet the recruited soldiers had their fear stripped from them by showering them with praise about being the chosen few or the ultra elite or something,” spat out the black bob cut girl in a white military uniform.

That said, Abashiri was a max security special prison.

The average thug off the street could not break in without considerable help. Someone else must have led them in the attack. Everyone else had really just been meant as a smokescreen in case of a counterattack. Human lives had been spent like the chaff or flares used to divert missiles.

“What school?” asked Sugiyado.

“The Hole.”

Sugiyado had made the same judgment based on the collapsible shovel held by one of the assassins who attacked the old man.

Ouka gave a blunt response.

“Based on their equipment and muscle tone, they appear to be a school derived from miners. They excel at constructing infiltration routes by digging tunnels, using special ninja tools based off of shovels and pickaxes, and extreme close-quarters combat in closed and dark locations. They are probably also explosives specialists.”

That might sound reasonable enough when hearing it all rattled off at once like that, but “closed spaces” and “explosives” did not go together. Normally, combining the two would also kill the user with the blast, shockwave, and rapid pressure change. Forcibly making it work suggested these people preferred fairly acrobatic strategies.

They must have dug a tunnel to secretly enter the Abashiri special prison. That too was not something you could accomplish simply by handing the necessary tools to some thugs.

So he knew what they had to do next.

“We need to figure out who was leading them,” he said. “They must be near the top of the Shogunate hierarchy. They have to be at least on the level of a High Ninja, so they should be registered as such.”

Ninjas were intelligence agents and spies for the Shogunate, so they were public servants. Any ninja living in this city would have their information on the classified server of the castle at the center of New Sapporo Domain.

But…

“I couldn’t find anything. And I doubt any further searching will do much better. Ta ha ha.”

“…”

Ouka let out some bitter laughter, but she did continue.

Success and failure were simply things that had happened. Hesitating to report something or trying to lie about it to save face would break the thread of trust binding them.

“Instead of the data we want not existing on the classified server, it was more like the server we were accessing wasn’t really the one at the center of New Sapporo Castle.”

Asagao, their computer whiz, began hopping up and down as she provided further information.

“From what I could see through the screen, it did look just like New Sapporo Castle’s official databank, but it probably wasn’t. All the communication lines heading toward the center of the castle were diverted to the side along the way. The server sends and receives 10s of millions of requests every single day, but I doubt a single person is actually accessing the real one.”

In other words…

Silver ponytail Hoozuki stated their conclusion in an exasperated sort of way.

“The castle at the center of New Sapporo Domain has either been entirely isolated or occupied and it may have already been destroyed on the inside. And in a way that leaves no one the wiser in an age when countless cameras are constantly providing content for online videos and social media articles. This is a highly unusual situation.”

“Bara is off using her own methods to pursue the identity of whoever they had leading that attack, but the more sources we have, the better. And I’m also curious who our enemy is and what’s going on inside that castle.”

Sugiyado and the girls would normally have viewed these unknown ninjas as the force working to protect New Sapporo Domain. To reiterate, ninjas were a special sort of public servant. To claim that title, they had to be serving someone in that region. But that was also why they would not have needed to create a special route in if they were planning an armed uprising.

They would only have to turn 180 degrees around and aim their blade or gun toward the person they were meant to protect.

“Now, then.”

They had reviewed the basic information.

They all had an accurate understanding of it all. There were no discrepancies there.

Sugiyado Souha, the modern ninja who hid his silhouette with a down jacket and his lower face with a scarf, came to a stop and let out a gentle breath while looking up at a towering building.

“Let’s go see for ourselves what’s going on inside the actual castle.”

### 2: The Princess’s Castle

New Sapporo Domain was divided into a grid of districts like a Go board and one public facility took up four full blocks.

That facility was New Sapporo Castle.

“(Wow, check this out, Ouka. That’s the famous date spot they mention in all the guidebooks and tourism sites!)”

“(I know. They say any couple that has their first date there is guaranteed a long life of happiness together!)”

Asagao and Ouka were doing a poor job of hiding their excitement, but Sugiyado decided not to say anything since it made them look more like ordinary tourists.

They were on the walking path surrounding the castle outside its moat.

Everything in New Sapporo Domain was divided into those blocky districts, but this impregnable castle alone formed a perfect circle surrounded by a circular moat. The castle’s stone walls and tower had a Japanese design, but it also had some stone barracks extending flatly out from it, giving it a mixed Japanese and Western look.

The castle was located in the middle of a populous metropolis, yet four artillery emplacements had been built on the inside of the moat to aim outwards. All four were equipped with a large-caliber swiveling railgun.

The only ways to access the castle were the one bridge across the moat and the three piers. All four of those access points had a cannon keeping an eye on things.

With a population of 4.5 million, New Sapporo Domain was the largest metropolis of the Hokkaido Area, but it was also a giant military base and constant battlefield due to the over 25 years since it declared a quasi-war with the Cyrillic Empire and other nations. It was hard to imagine when seeing the colorful lights and the happy couples, but the slow-melting artificial snow that would continue accumulating even at average temperatures was a type of environmental defense policy. If a suspicious person or vehicle were approaching, the domain’s ruler would fire those cannons without even considering what would happen to the connecting bridge or the city on the other side of the moat. Sugiyado glanced over at the water past the railing.

“A moat, huh?”

“Normally, we could pay them an official visit as Elite Ninjas or, if they weren’t willing to receive us, use fake IDs to disguise ourselves as tourists or government officials.”

That sighing response to their teacher’s comment came from 11-year-old Asagao.

White snow was still falling around them, but it was all artificial snow meant to construct an environmental barrier against an attack. The actual temperature was warm enough for short sleeves and the moat was at no risk of freezing into a giant skating rink.

They slowly walked around the moat and passed by some other groups of cheerful tourists. While remaining cautious of those tourists’ phone cameras, of course.

“Since we don’t know what’s going on inside, we can’t know what changes have been made to their security,” said Hoozuki to keep the conversation going. “Crossing the moat on the bridge or by boat would be too risky. If we’re found out, we’d be torn to pieces by a 900mm rapid-fire railgun, Sensei.”

“The railguns are how you really know you’re in the Hokkaido Area. On Honshu, they use ship’s guns. They would never use stationary weapons in a big city.”

“Bara wasn’t happy about this. Her Serpent Monster uses solenoid coils that she simplified for portability, so they count as technologically-inferior coilguns.”

As a gadget lover herself, the silver ponytail girl must have understood the feeling she was describing.

At any rate, they had to get across that moat.

A moat was an ancient and very basic defense, but that was also why it was so effective. Physically cutting off all routes in in all 360 degrees made it very difficult to sneak in.

Extremely small Asagao gave a cruel laugh in her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt.

“Keh keh keh. How about we put on some mizugumo to glide right on over? Or we could dive underwater with a bamboo tube in our mouths to swim over on our backs like otters.”

“That moat is bound to be filled with a liquid sensor using electrolytes. Simply put, if you so much as stick your fingertip in the water, they can sense something is amiss due to the change in electric potential. The bottom of the moat has to be covered in a ton of electrodes. The turtles and koi that live in the water will be ignored, but anything deemed to be hostile will get zapped by 5 million volts. And that’s 5 million volts while in the water.”

Even the famously deadly electric eel only provided a voltage of around 600 volts. However, the three students did not look at all surprised to hear their instructor’s lecture. This moat was used to protect a castle, so of course it would have defenses like that.

Ouka asked a question with a tone that suggested she was testing the older boy.

“So we can’t use the bridge, we can’t use a boat, and we can’t use the water. How are we supposed to get across, Sensei?”

The instructor did not hesitate to answer.

There was only one real answer.

“We walk across.”

### 3: The Moat

A low rumbling passed by overhead.

“…”

Sugiyado Souha looked up to see a thick ceiling of reinforced concrete. But he was not indoors.

The deadly moat was located about 20m below him.

In other words, he was below the one bridge across the moat.

Whether it was a large building, warehouse, or bridge, any structure that needed to support a large space with minimal materials would use trusses, rigid frames, honeycombs, and jungle gym structures made out of steel beams. A close-to-home example could be found by looking up at the ceiling of a gym.

Sugiyado did not care how many checkpoints and security cameras they had on the top of the bridge. He only had to plant his feet on the jungle gym structure laid out below the bridge and make his way to the impregnable castle that way. If no one saw him, he could not be found. That was the foundation of ninja movement.

At this point, there was no need for disguises or camouflage.

Hoozuki had already been wearing her ninja outfit as a riding suit, but Ouka had changed into her cutting-edge ninja outfit as well. It looked like a sleeveless kimono with a sideless skirt. It provided excellent defense against bullets, it strengthened her athletic abilities, and it showed off her soft body in a provocative way that would create an opening in those who saw it. Her outfit was a deadly system that used her as a component.

Asagao had not changed either. She was still wearing her white military uniform with baggy sleeves and a short skirt, but that was not meant for use in direct combat.

Hoozuki followed behind Sugiyado and spoke in an excited way with her silver ponytail falling on her seemingly bare back. It took a close inspection to notice that was a flesh-colored elastic material and not her bare skin.

“Sensei, I notice you aren’t leaping from beam to beam or anything like that. You just find these really clever routes that go against everything the designer expected.”

“Shh.”

He had them all come to a stop just before a castle patrol boat produced white waves in the water directly below. It had a 12.7mm Gatling gun and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher attached to its front armor. If that spotted them, not much would be left of them. Their bulletproof outfits would not do much against weapons of that size. And the boat would have a drive recorder installed, so it would not overlook them just because the pilot happened to be inattentive.

However.

“Incredible,” said extremely small Asagao in an exasperated way. “We just slipped right past its optimized anti-personnel auto-search.”

“We have the camera angles to thank for that. They’re only focused on the water’s surface and under the water.” Sugiyado sighed while leaning against one of the bridge’s beams. “They could have tens of thousands of cameras installed, but it was still humans who installed them and those humans will only point those cameras in the directions they expect a threat to arrive from. After all, installing and maintaining the cameras takes time and money, so they stop after covering ‘every’ route in. If it turns out there was a route they didn’t consider, well, that just makes avoiding the cameras a walk in the park.”

“The moat guards appear to be ordinary bodyguards.”

“Ouka, keep in mind that tourists cross the bridge to visit the castle,” said Hoozuki. “I doubt we’ll see anything out of the ordinary in the areas open to the public.”

Sugiyado listened to them while toying with the scarf over his mouth.

“If the ordinary workers are being manipulated without their knowledge, this likely goes all the way to the top of the command structure. I wonder what’s going on in the black box of the castle tower.”

There were cameras below the bridge, but those were all meant to check the water level during periods of heavy rain and they were not very thorough. By paying careful attention to where they stood on the complex jungle gym, they could easily slip behind the cameras.

When using an elevated route, it was always crucial to keep in mind where your shadow would be cast on the ground, but that was not an issue here since the bridge itself cast a giant shadow that covered up their own.

Ouka moved right up next to him and whispered to him.

She sounded like she was enjoying herself.

“I can see the other side of the moat below us, Sensei. We’re as good as inside the castle now.”

Once past the moat and on the castle grounds, they no longer had to fear the railguns that were fixed in place and could only swivel so far. After reaching the end of the complex arrangement of metal beams below the bridge, Sugiyado finally set his feet on solid ground again and spoke through his scarf.

“We’ve reached the southern railgun emplacement.”

“That’s equivalent to the sannomaru in a traditional castle, right?”

Arriving on the castle grounds was not the end of their journey. The grounds were divided up by several castle walls, they would find labyrinthine paths inside those walls, guards could throw stones or launch arrows at them from atop the castle walls, and armored samurai would be waiting to open fire on them in the open areas of the ninomaru and the honmaru. Attempting to navigate the labyrinth the castle designers had put in place was not a winning strategy.

Sugiyado sighed in his unzipped down jacket.

“The New Sapporo Domain has to constantly provide its four railgun emplacements with a massive amount of power and metal shells and I doubt they do that in a way that’s visible from the outside. There must be unofficial hidden passageways connecting the central castle to the four railgun emplacements.”

“And we can use that?” asked Ouka.

The boy nodded.

“We can arrive directly below the central castle. From there, we only have to climb up toward the surface.”

### 4: The Kunoichi Back Home

Now, what was Hanasawa Bara doing during all this?

“Hm, hm, hmm.”

The splashing of warm water echoed through the bath.

It was an indoor bath, but it was a natural hot spring. Bara usually preferred to pour in some Western aroma oil for a more relaxing experience, but a hot spring was not bad every now and then. The cypress bathtub gave the cloudy bathwater a unique and indescribable aroma.

But she could not relax in here forever.

A timer emitted a crude electronic tone.

“Hm? I suppose it is about time.”

The cloudy bathwater parted and she walked to the dressing room in the nude.

It was easy to assume she did everything in the most luxurious way possible, but she actually preferred a standard towel fabric to a fancy silk one. That texture was one of the few joys she had encountered after the fall of her family . It may have been similar to Sugiyado Souha’s love of Happy Churn.

The sexy girl gently grabbed a towel and dried off in front of a large mirror that reflected her full body. She always used two towels to dry off. The first she used on her face, her large chest, and her hips. Then she grabbed a new towel to dry off her arms, legs, and back.

She did it all in front of the mirror for much the same reason as a pro dancer.

The way she moved her body and shifted her weight had a large influence on her sex appeal. She liked to practice various actions and judge herself on them on a daily basis so she was always cognizant of how she looked doing different things.

After thoroughly drying herself off, she donned a special flesh-colored material that clung to her skin, much like the skintight material that figure skaters wore to stay warm. It was a cutting-edge piece of equipment that used a spider web structure to defend against bullets and blades and that used a combination of electric-potential-elastic belt cylinders and chemical winches made from a high-polymer water-absorbing gel. She put on ordinary underwear over that. There was actually no real reason she had to wear that, but humans were easily influenced by their imagination. Obvious underwear worked better at distracting the enemy than something that blended in with her flesh.

A normal kunoichi would normally finish it off by putting on the outer portion of her ninja outfit, but Bara was not your normal kunoichi. She needed another step in between.

She had something to attach to her lower back.

A mass of synthetic fabric larger than a pouch and smaller than a backpack more or less sat atop her large butt. Needless to say, that was the battery pack for the Serpent Monster coilguns hidden in her hair. Over that, she put on an oiran-style kimono that left her shoulders bare. Leaving the front of the kimono open helped hide the fact that the kimono and the knot of its sash were being used to hide the lump on her lower back. Finally, she stuck her phone into her cleavage. For a ninja, information was more important a weapon than blades or bullets.

Her hair was still a little damp and she did not have time to use a hairdryer, but it was not enough for her lovely ringlet curls to be squashed flat.

Her red hair doubled as the barrels for her coilguns. She had a wire-like framework installed through her hair to provide the optimal distribution for the solenoid coils.

“Hm, hm, hm, hm.”

She hummed as she left the dressing room. She sniffed at her kimono and hair to enjoy the lingering scent of the hot spring. Her bare feet slapped against the floor as she walked through a large indoor space with (her ultra-thin ninja outfit making it look like) her skin was flushed pink even along the line of her nape. She made her way to a room detached from the main building. It was a metal box larger than a one-room apartment.

“How are you feeling?”

She opened the metal double doors and asked a mocking question.

The space was shaped like a long rectangle and a closer examination would have shown it was a large cargo container. There was also someone imprisoned within, but no one could tell that from the outside.

A professional would not be so terrified of leaving behind any hairs or fingerprints that they used a powerful stain remover to get rid of all bloodstains on the walls and floor after every single job. Once their objective was complete, they would crush the entire container and toss it in a blast furnace to eliminate all the evidence. It was simple, easy, and thorough. A ninja’s tools of the trade had to be 100% reliable.

A single chair sat in that space surrounded by metal walls, but it was not for Bara.

The chair was bolted directly to the floor and it was equipped with a few belts that were strapping a man to the chair like he was just another component of the chair.

The man’s head had slumped to the side.

Bara roughly grabbed his hair and shook his head side to side, but he did not react in any way. Much like a houseplant someone had forgotten to water.

Again, there was no chair in here for Bara.

If she only needed to kill some time, she could do so outside the container.

She was not the type to spend much time on this sort of thing and she did not act any more cruelly than necessary. All she did was mechanically extract all of the information they needed. No more and no less. Although that made her feared for a different reason.

She let go of the man’s filthy hair, circled to the front of the chair, bent her knees, and shined a penlight into his eyes. His breathing was normal, but his eyes did not dilate like they were supposed to. That kind of physiological reaction could not be suppressed even with self-hypnosis.

This was the polar opposite of the pleasant towel texture.

The man had ended up like this because of the perfectly ordinary white cloth tape attached to his neck and chest.

(This itch tape is based on the hairy caterpillars that gather on rose hedges, but it worked even better than I expected. But it affects different people so wildly differently that you need to run an “allergy test” first. Expose them to it for too long and it might destroy their psyche.)

Since this topic was so risky, Sugiyado had not taught it through online video lessons like he had with everything else. Sleep deprivation, overwork, weights, ice, smoke, needles, blunt impacts, joint pressure, water buckets, electricity, drugs, and more. Bara had experienced and overcome a wide variety of torture methods at the hands of her instructor in the name “anti-torture training”, but all she had learned was that humans were not built to endure these specialized techniques – a simple fact that your average kid off the street already knew. With unlimited time to work with, anyone would reveal everything they knew sooner or later, or they would die before doing so. According to her instructor, Bara’s face had been a mess of tears and snot while she trembled and begged for her life despite knowing it was only training. Why did she only know this secondhand when it was about her? Because during all the trembling and convulsing, she had passed out more times than she remembered and she could not seem to coherently piece together what fragmentary memories still remained with her. …She thought her face would burst into flames from embarrassment when she thought about the fact that he must have cleaned her up after she made such a mess of herself in that closed room.

Thus, torture countermeasures were less about whether you could endure what was being done to you and more about how you could get the torturer to stop. Taking control of whoever was in charge was the top priority. You could make a plea to their emotions to get them to break with their side, you could set a fire or cause a power outage to let your companions know where you were, you could amplify the guilt so the torturer could not maintain their mental stability, or you could intentionally let yourself be badly wounded to destabilize your vitals. There were countless methods.

So.

Bloodless torture methods were a lot safer and more beneficial for the people hoping to get information out of someone. Even professional soldiers could come down with PTSD, so capturing someone and unilaterally harming them was not necessarily “safe”. But if things were managed in a digital, numerical, and emotionless way, you did not have to worry about being shaken yourself. Of course, Bara was the type to be shaken here if this man claimed to have a sick sister or a is girlfriend who was taken hostage.

She crossed her arms and lifted up her large chest while asking a question much like an overbearing doctor.

This was one of the people who attacked the Abashiri special prison.

“I have a question. What is your name?”

“Sarutobi Ryugo.”

“What is your real name?”

“Tanaka Haruo.”

Just like when you did not get the answer you wanted from a search engine or AI speaker, she repeated her question slower and more clearly and got the information she was after as easily as pulling it from a drawer.

This was all ninjas were.

The exciting legends and genealogies of famous ninja families were all camouflage meant to hide the truth. There was no actual ninja family of Sarutobi. The word “ninja” was widely known, but no one knew what they really were or what they really did and no one tried to dig too deeply into those questions. The general public image of ninjas derived from entertainment was all a bluff that did not come close to showing what real ninjas were like and existed to give real ninjas an easier time of doing their jobs. There were ninjas who specialized in infiltrating acting troupes and film studios to influence how ninjas were portrayed. It was an official duty of theirs, but one they had to keep hidden.

Hanasawa Bara’s real name was not Hanasawa Bara.

She had abandoned her old name with the fall of her family.

“I would like to know about your organization. Who are they?”

“Mountain.”

“More specifically.”

“The Nobushi.”

She got an answer, but she still clicked her tongue. The time lag before he answered had been off. Despite the many stimulations tormenting him, there should have been some hesitation.

(Is this a detour? Am I being directed into an intentional labyrinth?)

“Again, who do you belong to?”

“Sea.”

“I said to be specific.”

“The Pirate Gunners.”

As expected, he gave a different answer this time. And she doubted either of them was accurate. He had been given a few “insurance” stories that were false but would be convincing enough to satisfy the questioner enough that they stopped the torment.

This man was a disposable pawn recruited on site.

Getting any useful information out of him had been unlikely from the beginning, but she had not expected it to be this hopeless.

(On the other hand.)

She looked away from the man’s face and toward the phone she pulled from her cleavage. It was gathering a variety of data – brainwaves, heartrate, perspiration, body temperature, eyeball movement, facial muscles, etc. – but all of it said this man felt confident . Whatever he had been told in advance, once he was captured by the enemy and separated from his organization, he should have been filled with distrust and beginning to wonder if he should really continue to obey them.

(I doubt this is just him being a particularly tough guy. Someone must have filled him with this abnormal confidence. But how could they do it so well so quickly and who would specialize in that method?)

Bara sensed someone else’s control at work here. Would an amateur taken in for a single job really trust the parent organization so strongly? She might find a hint to the enemy’s identity there.

### 5: A Brain at 15 Below

Japanese castles were all about height.

A mound of dirt was built up and stone walls were built around that to create the foundation, barracks and an armory were built atop that, and the very top was built into a castle tower that would provide the solid defense the castle’s owner needed during wartime. Tall castles acted as a status symbol, but it was all based on the exceedingly simple logic that blades and bows had a harder time attacking you when you were high up in a tower.

On the other hand, Western castles were all about width.

Height was only needed for soldiers to launch arrows and throw rocks from atop the walls and for the towers that were used as lookout posts and holding cells. The castle’s owner would be seated behind several castle walls in the main tower’s hall facing the garden, but that was not necessarily the tallest point of the castle.

Some said this was due to the earlier inclusion of cannons in Western warfare, meaning the castle had to be surrounded by a fortress loaded up with cannons. Others said it was due to the greater available land in the West giving them more space on which to build their castles.

“(Okay, we’re about at the point where there’s no getting out of this if we’re caught! Minor thrills and tension are the perfect spice for a dangerous love!! Ahh, if only I could let Sensei feel the pounding of my heart right now!!)”

“(Ouka isn’t going to intentionally get us caught for a thrill, is she?)”

Ouka and Hoozuki’s comments were best ignored.

New Sapporo Castle had used some Western castle design, but its overall scale was very Japanese. The additional facilities like the barracks and food storage were spread out to the sides in a very Western way, but the main central castle itself was built upwards in the Japanese way. The current isolationist policies may have placed some restrictions on the castle designs.

“No point in just staring up at it,” said Sugiyado Souha while hiding his mouth below his scarf which included some special anti-facial-recognition designs.

To reiterate, the 900mm rapid fire-railguns required a massive amount of power and they could not allow that line to be cut off, so they would not use open power lines.

If they could find the entrance leading underground, they would have a direct route to the central castle.

“Sensei, where should we go first?”

“The server room.” He did not even need to think about it. “I’m curious about the tower at the top, but we need to start by checking the data on that classified server we can’t access from the outside. If the enemy is keeping us from it, there must be something there they don’t want us to see.”

No one asked how they would find that without a map of the place. Large computers like that needed to be kept cool to avoid overheating. Not many locations in a building could bear the weight of the computers and the cooling equipment while also providing enough power to run it all. Just like a library, they would avoid placing it on a higher floor.

That meant it might be inside the stone walls.

They had defeated a few of the attackers at Abashiri, but those had only been disposable pawns recruited on site and were unlikely to provide much information. The “real ninjas” that had led them were apparently found in the New Sapporo Domain and the classified server used by government workers was redirecting all requests so not even Elite Ninjas like Ouka could get in.

Who had killed that old man?

The castle’s server room would be the best way to find the answer. Even if the hardware had been destroyed, there had to still be some kind of hint left there.

They had left that conspicuous cross shuriken at the scene in an attempt to frame the old man’s grandson. In the same way, different ninja schools had different ways to overcoming the same problems.

“…”

Sugiyado gently stuck the tip of his air-pressure kunai out through the metal grating to use it like a mirror and check around outside. Only then did he gently push up the cover located above his head.

That was enough for him to feel the bomb he carried in his spine.

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

Even now, he could feel the gentle touch of the grim reaper’s invisible fingers on his back.

He found himself in a large, windowless room.

It was located within a stone wall, so the lack of windows was no surprise.

Computers the size of industrial refrigerators were lined up across the room like a library’s bookcases or an apartment complex’s buildings.

Ouka released a white breath from her small mouth and then spoke to him.

“None of it looks like it was destroyed, Sensei.”

“The chips or data inside might be a different story.”

Asagao’s short-skirt military uniform must not have been warm enough for this chilly room because a shiver ran through her body and she pressed against Sugiyado’s hip for warmth. Sugiyado, who had a down jacket for warmth, toyed with the scarf covering his mouth as he decided on a plan of action.

“We’ll have to start with this. If it has data on the ninjas, then we have what we wanted. If it doesn’t, we can guess at their identity based on how it was erased. But be on the lookout for decoy data. They’ve already planted false evidence once.”

That said, deception was a standard ninja tool, so there was no point in discussing whether it was right or wrong. Although anyone who broke a taboo would have to be prepared to accept their punishment if they were caught.

It was unknown how the outside requests were being redirected to a fake server, but that method would not work if they were directly accessing the hardware from within the castle. He checked the syncing device that connected the multiple computers and then he checked for a connection port. He hooked his phone up to that with a cable.

“Found it.”

“What does it say, Sensei?”

Asagao stood on her tippy-toes to look at the small screen and he tilted his phone so she could see.

“The Hole.”

“So we were right,” said Ouka with the sound of someone who had found confirmation of something unpleasant.

Modern ninjas were not divided into schools based on actual families like Iga or Koga. The schools had names like Harlot, Bandit, Assassin, Informer, etc. They were all people who had been left with no choice but to become ninjas to make a living for themselves or to fight. Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, Asagao, and even Sugiyado Souha were no exception. If you wanted a respected family name you could be proud of, you were better off becoming a samurai.

The Hole was shorthand for the type of ninja that had started out as miners and other expert hole-diggers. They all had their own unique history, though. With some, their ancestor had lent their abilities to a daimyo or other important figure. With others, they had caused some sort of scandal and needed to go into hiding.

“Specifically, the Stonewalls. While they did work with dirt, their main job was constructing castles. But instead of the carpenters who work on the actual building, they would handle the preliminary phase that involved digging a moat, filling it with water, and building the stone walls needed for the foundation.”

“What weapons do you expect them to use?” asked Hoozuki.

“Probably something you would use to dig a tunnel,” he replied. “So mostly construction tools like pickaxes, shovels, and hammers. For projectiles, they might throw stones. And as a hidden surprise, we should expect some explosives. That shouldn’t work in a closed environment, but the technique to safely set off explosives inside a tunnel would give them even more precise control of explosions than a fireworks maker.”

Instead of modifying weapons like swords or spears into “a weapon customized from a weapon”, they would have started with cooking tools and the tools of their trade. After all, ninjas were not samurai. Their status was officially protected by the government now, but they had been unofficial saboteurs back in the day. They would have grabbed a kitchen knife, a saw, or whatever else was handy and customized it for easier use. Ninja tools like the kaginawa and kusarigama might look pretty out there by people who did not understand where they came from, but most of them actually had their origin in everyday items.

For example, the shuriken is the best known ninja tool, but before the standard stick shuriken and cross shuriken had been developed, ninjas had started with any number of other objects: kanzashi, tatami needles, star decorations, square clasps, gears, long nails, scissors, chisels, sword guards, etc. And since the original kunoichis had been sex workers, they would not be the ones wielding carpentry tools like nails or chisels. Shurikens were a last resort and leaving them behind would provide evidence that might just reveal what kind of ninja you were. It was possible to build a profile of an enemy and work out their identity based on the ninja tools they used.

The enemy here were hole-digging experts. Their techniques for infiltration, sabotage, disruption, and all other tasks would all start from there.

“Then they would probably be the perfect people to bring down a castle, Sensei,” said Ouka with a troubled look. “They can dig a tunnel into the castle grounds, pull out the foundation to bring down the castle walls, and even guide a bunch of polluted water into the moat for a biological attack. All they have to do is abuse the techniques they already have.”

Asagao asked a question as a follow-on to the twintail girl’s comment.

“But, Sensei, they were stationed here to protect the castle, weren’t they? They haven’t built up a bunch of labyrinthine defenses, so what actually happened here in the castle?”

“This isn’t limited to New Sapporo Castle. The Stonewalls are vulnerability advisors. They take a look at castles and fortresses from a tunnel-digging perspective and play the enemy in some training to give advice on how to improve the place’s defenses. You could call them inspectors that find their allies’ vulnerabilities and provide a report so security can be improved.”

Silver ponytail Hoozuki loudly clicked her tongue at that.

“That isn’t good, Sensei. It means the Stonewalls might have complete plans of New Sapporo Castle. In fact, they might as well have master keys to all the Shogunate’s crucial facilities across the archipelago.”

Their job was to determine the weaknesses in the country’s most important bases and help fill in those security holes, but what if they failed to report on all the holes they discovered? They would have free access to any missile base or underground shelter they wanted.

That explained how they had so easily accessed the Shogunate’s max security prison in Abashiri to safely take that old man’s life. They would have measured out for themselves exactly where they needed to dig a tunnel to get in.

“Any actual names or numbers?” cautiously asked Hoozuki the cool beauty. “And what about the grandson of that old man…Murakami Shouzou, was it? We still don’t know his name.”

“I found it all here, but it’s been blotted out so I can’t read it. There’s some separate security system in place.”

“Sensei, you can leave that to me. I’ll have that rude mosaic gone in no time.”

With a barbaric smile, Asagao held her phone out above Sugiyado’s phone. She must have accessed his with short-range wireless because it filled in the missing parts of the documents like some kind of AR. The randomized redaction signal was removed and the hidden text was revealed.

Just then, they heard a low rumbling.

This was different from when they had entered. The heavy main door to the room was opening.

“(Asagao, the data is on your phone, right? Then let’s withdraw for now.)”

“(Don’t be silly, Ouka. I couldn’t possibly copy over all the data from this entire server room. It’s larger than a library. The data is organized by an index, but it’s scattered all over these systems. Grabbing the data from just one of them won’t give us anything readable!)”

“(In other words, we have to stay here while the decryption completes? What should we do, Sensei?)”

Hoozuki the cool beauty pressed him to make a decision.

They could already hear approaching footsteps.

They had no idea who this was. This large space had more computers than a library had bookcases, so the odds were low whoever-this-was was headed to the exact machine they were plugged into. But the fact remained they had nowhere to hide. Simply walking down the central aisle would let you see if anyone was hiding behind the machines lined up like bookcases.

What would they do?

Would they run?

Would they stay?

Or would they eliminate this person?

“…”

Sugiyado Souha grabbed his down jacket and swung it out like a crescent moon.

And.

### 6: Find a Reason for Your Choice

“…?”

Someone seemed to gasp in slight puzzlement.

There seemed to be more than one person here.

One person casually peered down the row Sugiyado’s group was hiding in and someone else spoke to them.

“Is something wrong, Princess?”

“No.”

Just like with a library’s bookcases, there was nothing for Sugiyado and the other three to hide behind.

And yet that was the response from the kimono-wearing beauty of around 20 who had been addressed as “princess”.

She had black hair that fell all the way to her ankles and she wore an old-fashioned junihitoe.

Was that the official uniform of the castle’s princess?

“Nothing is wrong. Now, Murakami, what did you want to tell me that required coming all the way down here? Couldn’t we have discussed this in the tower?”

Needless to say, she had not lied to protect some unknown intruders she saw. She had no reason to do so.

Then why had the princess said that?

The answer was very simple. When she had looked down that row while walking down the central aisle, she truly had not seen anyone there.

It was all thanks to that down jacket.

Sugiyado had frozen his removed jacket and used it as a shield while backing against the wall with the girls.

It was one of the oldest tricks in the book.

That ninja technique was so primitive it was more often used in comedies, but the human eye was notoriously bad at seeing things under certain conditions and in certain environments. For example, it was well known that your sense of perspective failed to work on a pure white snowfield or salt flat.

It was all in how you used it.

This large space was kept as cold as a refrigerated warehouse to keep the large computers from overheating, so freezing his removed down jacket and covering its surface with white frost was enough to create the perfect camouflage. If someone saw it from a distance while taking a general look at the scene, they would fail to notice anything. And since it was frozen, it would also fool thermo sensors. Both due to the white frost and the down jacket’s layer of air used for insulation.

There was, however, one problem.

“(Wait, wait, wait. I’m going to stick out. Closer! Move in closer!)”

“(I can’t move any further than this, Asagao!)”

“(Ouka, you just want to stay as close to Sensei as you can get, don’t you? Just so you know, I’ve heard coming on too strong on the first date can scare guys away!)”

It was a makeshift shield, so Sugiyado and the other three had to squeeze in really tight to fit behind it.

But the boy ignored that close proximity as he focused all his concentration on his ears to listen in on the conversation happening outside the barrier.

He had already noticed a few things of interest in the initial short exchange.

Princess.

And Murakami, the same family name as the old man.

“…”

Sugiyado shoved his face into the chest of the closest undeveloped girl. Right now, he needed any kind of unusual memory he could find.

(Something other than a ninja would have been best, but I can’t be picky right now.)

For the most part, long-term memories were not so much forgotten as they were fused with other memories until they lost all meaning. But if you intentionally placed the memory in the wrong category to separate it from similar experiences, the information would last longer.

“(Eek!? S-Sensei! As one of your fully-trained kunoichis, I’m not going to get flustered over something like this, but I’d still prefer you didn’t breathe in the air from my chest! Could you please explain what this is about? O-or at least don’t bite too hard?)”

Despite what she said, Ouka seemed plenty flustered, but that was not what he wanted to remember. The distant conversation was his top priority.

The conversation was held between a young man and woman a little older than Sugiyado.

But after walking another row along the central aisle, they moved out of view.

“I must earnestly ask you to reconsider everything that is happening here.”

“How many times must I repeat myself here? I have no choice in the matter. Murakami, you cannot become a hero. That has already been determined, so accept your lot in life. An individual’s power is not enough to change history.”

“Princess.”

“These dangerous ideas of yours will only put New Sapporo Domain in danger, so I cannot allow any of them to bear fruit. Ask me about this once more and I will be forced to imprison you. Even if you are my most trusted ninja.”

They both must have been restless because they returned to this aisle.

Sugiyado could not let his guard down.

If they appeared in the corner of those two’s vision for even a split second and their presence here was detected, alarms would go off across this entire area of the city.

Asagao whispered a question while pressed against his back.

“(So is that Princess Karin? I heard she has temporarily taken over the domain for her bedridden father.)”

If the old man’s grandson was her “most trusted ninja”, he must have worked his way very deeply into the castle. And even if this was an unofficial discussion, it was unusual for the princess temporarily ruling in her father’s stead to leave the castle tower during her official duties. These two must have had a fairly strong bond between them.

“Princess, I know you are aware what circumstances the New Sapporo Domain…no, the entire Hokkaido Area finds itself in.”

“Yes, the underground linear motor trains have long since been stopped and the problems only worsen. But that is exactly why I intend to do what I consider best. And unfortunately, that differs with the path you prefer. Return to the path I have prepared for you, Murakami. The path you want will only bring bloodshed to this northern land and its innocent people.”

“…”

“Do you defy me, Murakami?”

“I will suppress my own desires and do what is necessary. Even if it means burning the castle down.”

“And that is why you called me down here, isn’t it?”

“Prepare yourself.”

Something glinted in the young man’s hand.

His ninja tool was a silver-colored musical instrument resembling a long flute or baton. That iron flute was a versatile weapon that could be used to bludgeon, launch poisoned darts, slash or jab with the claw on the side, and even swing around on a chain to break armor.

But Princess Karin actually seemed to respond with a snort of laughter.

She brushed her long hair from her shoulder with one hand and spoke down to the young man.

“What do you hope to accomplish after capturing me? I do hope the answer isn’t ‘kill me’.”

“…”

“Whether or not this rebellion succeeds, you will no longer have a place in this castle. Murakami, you have heard about the ‘trouble’ outside, haven’t you? You have nowhere to run. Not anymore.”

“Princess, are you saying-!?”

“Hee hee. I have merely received reports as the local political ruler and keeper of the peace. No more and no less.”

The junihitoe beauty remained entirely calm even as she made a sort of confession by revealing information that only the culprit could know.

She placed a hand over her mouth to hide her teeth even as she smiled.

“Won’t you please do as I say, Murakami? Do you not find the words of your substitute ruler to be trustworthy?”

He could never say he was doubting the person he had sworn loyalty to. That alone could be deemed intent to rebel.

So the isolated young man had to force out his words.

“I am simply following the path I believe to be right. Even if it means crossing blades with you.”

But was this the truth behind the attack on Abashiri and the killing of that old man? To rob this disobedient ninja of anyone else to rely on and leave him trapped in her castle? Had it all happened for no more reason than that?

This was an isolationist military nation.

It was ruled by the Shogunate who had maintained the principle of Kirisute Gomen in the modern era, so the Shogun’s family and the Daimyos were given preferential treatment in all things. The crime of rebelling against them was punished by execution of the culprit’s entire family. And that applied even if the rebellion was discovered and stopped in advance.

In that sense, Princess Karin’s preemptive strike may not have violated the Shogunate’s laws .

“…”

But silver ponytail Hoozuki frantically grabbed Sugiyado’s shoulder.

“(What do we do, Sensei? At this rate, the princess will be killed!? That ninja’s relative was killed just in case , so he has no reason to stop now!)”

“(But, Sensei, if we intervene to rescue her, the entire New Sapporo Domain will know we’re here.)”

Asagao was not wrong either. The ninja world was not the same as the samurai one. They were sometimes faced with a decision that had no right answers.

There was no time.

Sugiyado Souha replayed everything he had seen and heard in his mind.

The old man in Abashiri had seemed to know something, but he had been killed by the Stonewalls and his grandson had been framed for the crime.

The data on the Stonewalls had been hidden so not even Elite Ninjas like Ouka’s group could access it.

New Sapporo Castle had likely been taken over by the Stonewalls without anyone outside the wiser.

The way those two spoke to each other suggested that young man had a fair amount of authority within the castle and that remained even after it was secretly hijacked.

Princess Karin was working to protect New Sapporo Domain and this Murakami ninja was trying to stop her.

Even if it meant drawing his blade and harming her.

“(What do we do, Sensei?)” whispered Ouka as if making a final check.

He knew there was no time.

“…”

So he gathered his resolve.

### 7: The Clash

The wind whipped up.

80% of a ninja battle happened during the advance preparations. After all, they were primarily saboteurs. They would be easily crushed if it came to a head-on battle, so they always needed to do a thorough investigation before fighting. They would blend into the local area, construct false connections to gather information, locate enemy weaknesses and seams in their relationships that could be secretly widened into greater rifts, procure necessary materials, determine the optimum time and place, and then, after all that had been done, sneak in and make a surprise attack from the shadows.

So once things began, a ninja always moved swiftly.

In that moment, Sugiyado Souha swept aside his camouflage – the frozen down jacket – and rushed out with the force of a crossbow bolt. He had mastered the use of his body in the fields engineering and perception.

First of all, his movements were fast.

He suddenly sprang up from a curled-up position to reach his top speed almost instantly. If a normal person tried that, they could easily tear a ligament or muscle.

Also, his movements slipped outside of people’s perception.

After initially charging top speed toward his opponent to instill instinctual fear and caution in them, he began to jump irregularly around, kicking off the side of a large computer and then landing on top of it.

Those 3m obstacles could be cleared with sport techniques.

They were laid out like the bookshelves in a library.

That meant there was plenty of space between the top of the computers and the ceiling. But people naturally assumed other people would stay on the floor and use the aisles, so their eyeballs would refuse to move in the right direction at first. Meanwhile, he filled the nearly 20m distance between them.

After running to the end of the row of large computers, he pulled two air-pressure kunais from the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt. Once he spread those deadly wings, he only had to take flight.

He attacked from directly above.

On one side was the young man dressed in a pitch-black ninja outfit.

On the other side was the Japanese beauty in a junihitoe and with ankle-length black hair.

Sugiyado knew exactly which one to aim at.

His target was Princess Karin, who was temporarily ruling this domain.

The unpleasant clang of well-forged steel on steel reverberated through the room.

He had planned for a counterattack from Murakami – hence the two kunais. But who had deflected the second one?

Yes.

Airborne Sugiyado Souha pushed back against the Murakami youth’s attack, but he had also set things up so his other blade would tear into Princess Karin’s vitals.

There was only one possible person who could have deflected that air-pressure kunai.

“I see.” Sugiyado kicked off the wall to shift the timing of his fall just enough that they could not target him as he landed. “Princess Karin, it would seem you aren’t just a sheltered girl who was put in charge simply for being her father’s daughter.”

“…”

She had pulled something from her sleeve at the last second, but it was not a dagger like you expect of a powerful family’s daughter.

It was a handheld hammer.

The one-handed hammer was entirely made of metal, even the handle. It could be used to simply hit things, or the string wrapped around its handle could be unwound to swing it around more erratically. Also, the handle was hollow. Why was that? It was the same as the disguised knives the Cyrillic Empire specialized in. By loading a matchlock gun bullet, it could be fired from outside the hammer’s range for a surprise attack.

She used a mining tool combined with an explosive.

And she was skilled enough to deflect an attack from a former Hidden One like Sugiyado Souha.

She was definitely with the Hole.

She showed all the distinctive signs of the Stonewalls who specialized in digging tunnels.

Yes.

There was a lot of confusing information here, but only a few key pieces mattered at the moment.

A trap had been laid for Murakami and his blood-related grandfather had been killed.

He fought with an elegant iron flute. He was a ninja, but a very different type from the muddy hole-diggers.

If Murakami was a Song ninja a step removed from the Stonewalls, then Sugiyado was much more curious about what Princess Karin had said here.

“It’s all for New Sapporo Domain and the north as a whole, huh?”

He could make a pretty good guess what this was about.

“But I haven’t heard what exactly you’re doing. Anyone can claim to have justice on their side, but what that means differs a lot between different people. Now, I just hope this isn’t anything as dangerous as a destructive coup d’etat or joining forces with the Cyrillic Empire.”

“Insolent boy.”

“Whatever’s going on in this domain, I am praying that you are the real Princess Karin . If a body double attacked her ruler and took her place to take control of the domain, there isn’t much hope left for you.”

Make no mistake here.

Sugiyado Souha was no longer a ninja serving the Shogunate. He was no more than a prisoner. Wielding a blade and even being outside the prison at all only added to his list of crimes. He was not fighting on the Shogunate’s command or to bring about world peace.

An old man had died with regret in his heart.

In his final moments, he had worried his fate would put his grandson in danger.

That lonely old man had taught Sugiyado so much while he was in prison.

So.

White steam erupted across the entire area. Sugiyado had jabbed an air-pressure kunai into a nearby pipe and the chemical coolant for the computers had rapidly vaporized.

He spun around.

He did not care about Princess Karin’s conspiracy right now.

“Hey!!”

Murakami tried to shout something within the obscuring steam, but Sugiyado was already on the move. He flipped the air-pressure kunai around in his hand and slammed the bottom of the grip against the side of the young man’s neck to knock him out like a switch had been thrown.

“Sensei,” whispered a voice in his ear.

“Take care of it, Ouka.”

He hated to admit it, but Sugiyado Souha had a weight limit. At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He had no hope of carrying an unconscious person around on his own.

Then Asagao, the youngest girl who specialized in information warfare, spoke to him.

“(I’ve managed to piece together all the data on the Stonewalls. I’ve recombined all the necessary parts on my mobile device, so we can leave this place now, Sensei.)”

Then leave they would.

If Princess Karin was acting like this, taking a peek inside the castle tower would not be a good idea.

They needed to leave New Sapporo Castle.

“––––––”

Sugiyado heard a whispering beyond the white steam.

Either due to the ankle-length hair or the multilayered junihitoe, she appeared to have the silhouette of an inhuman serpent.

And that monster threw resentment his way in human language.

“You have sealed your fate here, insolent boy.”

Curses were common in this field.

But Sugiyado had yet to see one that actually accomplished anything.

### 015. Chapter 2

### 1: The Stonewall Girls

It was already dusk.

However, the quiet of the late hour was obliterated by deafening sirens and the tremor of army boots marching in perfect unison.

The commotion had spread beyond just the castle. Trucks and large transport helicopters loaded with fully-equipped armored samurai had been deployed to set up two or even three layers of blockades.

The moat was always lit up once the sun set and the tourists outside of that aimed their phone cameras toward the vehicles and samurai, but they all tilted their heads once they did. Their screens were covered by secret preservation AR, special markers that said “Recording Not Allowed”. Mobile devices these days did not even come with a paper user’s manual, so most of them probably had no idea their phones did that.

Meanwhile…

“So you only managed to drag some filthy guy out of there? Really? That was honestly all you managed to accomplish???”

Hanasawa Bara spoke in a disinterested way from the driver’s seat of a food truck designed to cook crepes, just like you could find at any tourist destination in any part of the world. Needless to say, that was the mobile base she was using to pick up Sugiyado Souha and the others after they left the castle.

She had changed into her casual clothing to blend into her surrounding, but with her, that still meant a fancy red dress. She almost looked like a princess, but that worked well when combined with the mistaken assumption that she was a tourist destination vendor. In fact, with her sexy body and red ringlet curls, she would have looked more conspicuous in a plain track suit or jumpsuit.

She even shared that benefit with Shizukuma Asagao who wore her baggy-sleeved and short-skirt white military uniform in the passenger seat. When the two of them sat side by side, their clothing seemed to match.

The black bob cut girl let out an exasperated sigh.

“Stop lashing out because we all got to enjoy a secret date while you were stuck back at the base. That was an important job.”

“Hmph.”

When the younger girl in the passenger seat out-argued her, Bara could only puff her cheeks out like a child.

However, they remained within the blockade.

They were only just outside the illuminated moat, leaving them in the tourist area that was like a walking path and viewing platform in one. Lines of New Sapporo Domain armored trucks were roughly driving past just a few meters away even now. The castle’s soldiers and bodyguards were shouting angrily at the people that photography was banned. The enemy never expected their quarry to be right under their nose, but certain preparations were still needed when making a surprise attack like this.

When blessed with the opportunity to work in a group, you always needed to keep one of your people “outside” if at all possible.

Sugiyado Souha had driven that rule into their heads because he wanted to raise them into ninjas who could return from missions alive, not just act as artillery shells that only made one-way trips. But being stuck with that job was never fun. Just when you thought you could go on a mission with your beloved teacher and enjoy a secret date that would end the instant you were found, you had to stay behind. Having to wait all on your own until sunset felt like having part of your one and only adolescence sold off against your will. Bara really wanted to curse her own rock-paper-scissors luck.

“Anyway, drive slow and safe.”

“I know that.”

Speeding out of there would give them away immediately. Bara even kept the headlights on the gentle low beams for the benefit of the oncoming traffic. She drove the crepe food truck calmly and slowly away from the park in front of the moat.

“You got that data out from the depths of New Sapporo Castle, didn’t you? Did you get any details on those Stonewalls?”

Bara had performed her own interrogation while they were gone, but she had not found anything more than the group’s name.

“I was planning to reveal this once Sensei rejoined us, but whatever.”

Asagao attached her phone (which she had so thoroughly modified on the inside that it was close to being a cyber war weapon) to the food truck’s navigation system.

“The Stonewalls have around 300 combat members, but these are the main four. And Princess Karin is of course at the very top.”

“…”

Kairou Amamo.

Age: 16. Female.

An expert at terrain-effect attacks made using pure excavation techniques. Brings confusion to the entire battlefield with almost any type of terrain changes, including quicksand, marshes, pitfalls, falling rocks, landslides, and even volcanic activity and water vapor explosions. One of the few survivors of her attacks said “a dragon is hidden in the earth”.

Taganuma Yukizasa.

Age: 13. Female.

An expert at combat in enclosed and dark places. Shows the true value of her short height and limbs while fighting in complex indoor environments filled with countless obstacles. The way she persistently sticks with her target has earned her the nickname of Enemy Stalker.

Horisato Oume.

Age: 18. Female.

An expert at chemical reactions, including explosions. That includes the obvious like guns and explosives, but also includes the use of incomplete combustion to create smokescreens or poison gas. Her skills also give her a specialty in medicines and treating wounds.

And.

Shirahama Karin.

Age: 20. Female.

The princess of a domain who chose to master the “etiquette” of a ninja in order to survive in the Machiavellian world of politics. Has mastered every technique of the Stonewall school, but also possesses the strategic mindset needed to view the big picture of the outside world. A next-generation leader who can freely use the light and dark – the clean and the unclean.

(Not that we can trust the ages and photos given here.)

As an expert in disguises and flirtation, Hanasawa Bara told herself to not accept this data at face value.

Were all the others girls because that was more comfortable for Princess Karin at the top? No, she had apparently convinced that young Murakami man to join her forces, so maybe it was her subordinates who had decided to surround her with girls.

Bara was normally one of the ninjas who worked to preserve the public order, so she knew what conditions would be used to choose checkpoint locations at times like this. She accurately drove the crepe food truck around while making an exasperated comment.

“Quite the distinguished group.”

“Right?”

“I can’t believe that’s what you spent your secret date on. Sensei has to learn not to talk about other girls all the time.”

“Right!? Ouka is sulking pretty hard, so be on your guard around her.”

With the talk of terrain and explosives, that group sounded even more flashy than Bara’s group. This northern land was one of the few places in the country that was flat all the way to the horizon. Those skills were likely what they had honed to push back any large armies the Cyrillic Empire sent in. And in addition to the largescale attacks and high firepower, they had the assassin types who could use the confusion to pinpoint strike the enemy commander or armory. The knights would be preparing to tear into the enemy formation while the rooks and bishops were making a mess of the board, so you could not let your guard down.

Asagao gave a fearless smile in her white military uniform.

“The documents call them High Ninjas, but it’s possible they intentionally held back during their advancement exams so they wouldn’t stand out.”

“They seem to fight under completely different rules and on a completely different scale from us.”

“That just means we can’t let our guard down no matter what.”

And.

As we change focuses, the vehicle shook slightly.

There was no way to tell the time of day in the enclosed back of the truck. Sugiyado Souha and the Murakami youth were confronting each other in there. However, the young man had his iron flute and other weapons taken from him and he was tied to a chair.

Sugiyado’s eyes fell on a different weapon than the main iron flute.

It was a cross shuriken given a sharkskin surface.

(Old man.)

But letting his feelings show would accomplish nothing as a ninja. He hardened his heart so he could get down to business before the young man noticed.

Just to be safe, he had Ouka and Hoozuki with him here.

“(Boo. Why’d he have to invite another guy onto our secret date?)”

“(Don’t complain, Ouka. If you refuse to wait, you’ll never get your reward.)”

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

No matter how much of an advantage he seemed to have, he could not forget that. In shogi terms, Sugiyado Souha was like the lance. He might seem specialized for this field, but that illusion vanished as soon as his weakness was discovered. And he had no way of fighting back even if he noticed it had been discovered.

So if he had help, it was safest to accept it.

“If there’s something you want to talk about, then go ahead and talk.”

Sugiyado pulled a chair across from the young man and sat in it. Ouka and Hoozuki changed positions to lean on the back of that chair.

“But we have nothing we really want to talk about. To be honest, I’m not interested in some large conspiracy. I achieve my goal as long as you’re removed from all that danger. The simplest solution there would be to knock you out with an anesthetic and then dump you in some remote village no one’s ever heard of. If you don’t do anything, that’s what will happen. Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“Who are you? And those two aren’t your average girls.”

Ouka looked miffed the young man had singled out her and Hoozuki. It was true they were Elite Ninjas, but she must have felt like Sugiyado deserved that sort of praise too.

At any rate, the young man’s confusion was understandable. Everyone knew a captured ninja was not going to have a good time, so he must not have expected them to have a little chat like this.

The scarf boy relaxed his shoulders and spoke a certain name.

But not the young man’s.

“Murakami Shouzou.”

“Kh.”

“Do you see how I got involved in this now? Princess Karin wasn’t bluffing. She really did do it .”

For a while, the young man said nothing.

Sugiyado simply waited.

He could have told the young man that a professional ninja needed to suppress his emotions and remain coldly logical to survive, but he chose not to.

“I see.” The young man who had inherited the Murakami name eventually got some words out. “I see.”

“Let’s set aside our positions as professionals for a moment.” Sugiyado started again with his voice low. “I’m not working myself to the bone for the state or the Shogunate here. I’m a prisoner from Abashiri, just like that blunt but caring old man, so don’t think I’m some stickler for the rules. Let’s keep this short. If you waste my time, I’ll go with the ‘anesthetize you and dump you on the side of the road’ option.”

“…”

“Ouka, prepare the halothane tank and calculate out the right amount for a standard body weight of 68kg. And really, if we’re going to recommend retiring from this dangerous line of work and living a leisurely second life, we should probably gift him with some mild lasting effects.”

“Understood, Sensei. I’ll add 10 to the normal number. That should give him some chronic tingling in the limbs.”

“O-okay, okay!”

The young man must have thought there was nothing he could do while bound to the chair. And with enough of a lasting effect to take him out of the fight, he would forever lose his chance to rush in and solve the problem here in New Sapporo Domain. Or the problem related to his grandfather’s death. But his pride still had him sounding reluctant as he opened his mouth.

“I am Murakami Michihiko. I was sent from Edo as an external observer for the entire Hokkaido Area!”

“Observer?”

“Hokkaido isn’t the only place with one. Ever since the Doshusei Reform split the archipelago into 8 Areas, observers are occasionally sent in from the central government to keep an eye on things. The idea is to make sure none of the regional governments try to rebel using the very autonomy granted them by the Shogun.”

Hoozuki waved something in her hand. It looked like a silver flute, but it was actually the ninja weapon that young man trusted with his life.

That old man had said he created ninja weapons for his grandson and they were from the Song school, so that iron flute may have contained something of the old man in its design.

Sugiyado Souha made sure not to let his emotions show on his face as he spoke.

“So you are a step removed from the Stonewall hole-digging experts with deep roots in the Hokkaido Area.”

“You’d be wrong there,” said Murakami Michihiko with self-deprecation in his voice. “The Stonewalls were the contact point for my observer duties in the Hokkaido Area. They acted as an intermediary, so we did interact.”

His job was to arrive from outside and determine any deficiencies in the local system. That meant detecting this oddity in New Sapporo Domain was a major success for him, but the conversation in the castle’s server room suggested they had not been enemies to begin with.

He had likely planned to use Princess Karin’s support as a foothold while he began to investigate the rest of the Hokkaido Area. He never would have imagined that the safe zone he had discovered was in fact rotten to the core.

No.

Maybe it was more like he had stumbled across a truth he would have much rather remained ignorant of.

“It’s all about sharing,” said Michihiko while still bound to the chair. “All sorts of technology were introduced to fight back against the Cyrillic Empire, including the slow-melting artificial snow, the two strategic anti-air laser beam cannons, and the four large-caliber railguns at the princess’s New Sapporo Castle, but this land is simply too vast. That method of protecting the island costs too much. The Empire doesn’t even have to cross the ocean now. They can just sit back and wait for New Sapporo Domain to economically collapse and for the rest of the Hokkaido Area’s domains to follow suit.”

“…”

The truck must have made a turn at an intersection because they felt a powerful force from the right.

They were using this food truck because New Sapporo Domain and the rest of the Hokkaido Area were now “car cities”. Why was that? Because the underground linear motor train meant to connect the six domains had been shut down for defense reasons.

Or so it was said, but was that really true? Linear motor trains used electromagnets to move at speeds greater than 500km/h, so they of course required a massive amount of power. That lower-priority guzzler of power had been eliminated in a way that would not concern the people too much.

“Everything requires power, but there is only so much they can produce themselves and Honshu still refuses to allow the installation of an undersea power cable. Maybe they don’t want even more of the country’s nuclear power to be focused on Tsugaru Domain, but the prevailing rumor within the castle is that Honshu fears giving the north enough power to isolate themselves.”

So had opinions differed on how to secure the power they needed?

“That left only one option. Or so Domain Lord Hatsunaga believed,” said Michihiko. “The importation of core infrastructure. It isn’t that uncommon on the continent. It’s the same as having a neighboring country dispose of your trash or having two countries share water and sewer services when a major river runs through them both.”

“Are you suggesting what I think you are?”

“Yes.” Michihiko’s ropes strained. “The Karafuto Route. You heard talk about the northern Wakkanai Domain expanding into a Dejima, right? The idea was to lay out an undersea power cable from there to gain the needed power.”

Instead of Sugiyado, it was twintailed Ouka who was leaning on the boy’s chair from behind who frowned at that. But Sugiyado was the one in charge of this interrogation, so she seemed reluctant to interrupt.

The young man let out a self-deprecating sigh.

“Yeah, it’s completely backwards, isn’t it? They would be relying on the Empire to power the equipment they need to protect themselves from the Empire. They would be helpless as soon as the Empire shut off the power, so they would essentially be presenting their Achilles’ heel to the enemy.”

“…”

Sugiyado thought for a bit.

This was all about deciding who to sell themselves off to: the Shogunate, the Cyrillic Empire, a corporation such as a power company, or an academic institution like a university. Whoever they asked to supply the power they needed would then hold the lifeline to the entire Hokkaido Area. That was a big enough deal to bring down the balance between the Four Occupations.

The Shogunate had refused, so who was their next best bet?

Had they arrived at that choice through the process of elimination, or had they intentionally steered toward the Shogunate’s enemy out of simple spite.

“But you said that was the Domain Lord’s idea, right? Do you mean the Princess ruling in his place sees things differently?”

“I imagine she poisoned him. I just hope she still has enough of a heart left that it was something nonfatal.”

Poisoning your own father even nonfatally did not sound like the act of someone “with a heart”.

They had not seen inside New Sapporo Castle’s tower, but had people’s sensibilities really grown so warped in there?

Murakami Michihiko continued with a bitter look on his face.

“I don’t know where she intends to get it, but Princess Karin apparently plans to acquire a massive amount of power from a different route. But energy is energy – it can be used for good or evil. We’re talking about a power source large enough to run the defense system covering the entire Hokkaido Area, so is there any way it can’t be used for the wrong things ? As seen with nuclear power, energy can as easily bring peace as it can bring destruction.”

Ouka and Hoozuki’s eyes wandered a bit at the mention of nuclear power.

The incident they had once caused had begun with the theft of an ultra-small modular nuclear reactor being carried by a freight train.

But Sugiyado did not touch on their past wounds.

“That isn’t the crux of the issue, is it?”

“No. There is a hurdle beyond how the power is used. Even if this power source is perfectly safe and peaceful, they still have to prove that somehow. What if people mistakenly believe it could explode when used incorrectly? If people start to think they’re hiding a massive bomb, it could lead to war between the Hokkaido Area and the Empire, or even a civil war between the Hokkaido Area and Honshu.”

“I see,” said Sugiyado.

Princess Karin, leader of the Stonewalls, was also a risk here.

People were never free of their own minds.

The greatest risk of a revolution or uprising was when the thread of tension went slack. As soon as they were freed from having to figure out some way to fix their power problem, she might just reach for a fearsome switch.

She might not just use that power for defense.

What if she decided they could win if they went on the offensive and launched a needless attack on the Cyrillic Empire? Once the Empire had a justification for retaliation, they would be more than happy to attack. That could lead to a long, drawn-out war fought with overwhelming numbers.

And…

“Okay, I can see the flaw in the Lord and the Princess’s plans, but how were you planning to safely escape this situation?”

“I think the supposed threat of the Empire is overblown. Whenever he ran into trouble with the ordinary finances, Domain Lord Hatsunaga would work up some extra funding in the name of military expansion. He started talking up the threat of the Empire as no more than a way to get the funding he needed, but that eventually grew into an actual concrete fear that is now draining money from the entire Hokkaido Area.”

“…”

“I have no intention of supporting the Empire or taking them lightly. I am a Shogunate ninja tasked with protecting this nation, after all. But if we can accurately assess the threat, we should be able to better defend ourselves with less waste.”

Sugiyado doubted the young man was lying.

At the very least, the ninja named Murakami Michihiko believed that to be true and was willing to bet his life on it.

The young man said more while Sugiyado pondered the matter.

“I must stop Princess Karin’s project no matter what. I am willing to offer up my own life to do so! I won’t ask you to help me, but at least drop me off somewhere in New Sapporo Domain. I won’t cause you any trouble, so let me clean up this problem!!”

“Is that so?” said Sugiyado.

Silence fell for a while.

But the former Hidden One appeared to have already made up his mind.

The crepe food truck’s brakes squealed as it came to a stop. They must have been at some sort of destination.

Sugiyado rapped on the thin metal door and called outside.

“You heard him, Ekaterina. The rest is in your Imperial hands.”

Michihiko stared blankly at the boy.

He probably honestly had no idea what those words meant. But this was all very real. The metal door was roughly thrown open from the outside and fully-equipped soldiers with identities hidden by masks, helmets, and goggles stormed onto the truck.

The words they exchanged were not even in Japanese.

This entire place had suddenly started to feel awfully Cyrillic.

“What? Eh!? What’s going on here!?”

Sugiyado waved a hand dismissively and said one thing more.

“You can take him away if you want, but leave the chair and rope.”

Murakami Michihiko’s mouth was covered now and he was helplessly carried outside.

To reiterate, Sugiyado Souha’s objective was to fulfill his promise with that dead old man: take care of that kid. So why would he ever give “that kid” any freedom to act if he was only going to recklessly run into danger?

He would not let the young man die.

Even if the young man resented him for it.

“…”

The crepe food truck was empty now, but it creaked as someone new stepped inside.

She wore an imbalanced outfit of a thick coat worn over a sheer camisole. Her skin was far too white to be Asian and her ankle-length hair was a very light platinum blonde. She had a slim outline all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes, so she would have fit right in as a ballerina or figure skater. She seemed something like a rose scattering excessive sex appeal through the simple act of walking, but she was more mechanical and precise than that.

“(I can’t believe this is happening on our date.)”

“(Hold your tongue, Ouka. You’ll lose points.)”

Ouka and Hoozuki looked somewhat exasperated.

Simply walking around looking like that was a big deal given the archipelago’s current isolationist policies.

The blonde beauty giggled in a bewitching way.

“It has been too long, Comrade Souha.”

“I am aware that not even the Empire addresses people that way anymore, you know? Where did you swim in from this time? Through a snowmelt pipe? You don’t smell like a sewer, at least.”

“That intel is the Neva River Nymphs’ lifeline, so it is of course a secret. …Until you take a liking to the title of comrade, anyway.”

Simply put, Ekaterina’s Neva River Nymphs were a group of frogmen. Their actions in New Sapporo Domain went undetected because they wore highly-insulated suits and used caustic soda breath purification devices that would function for a maximum of 48 hours straight. That allowed them to move freely around large cities by hiding below the surface of a river or another body of water, including water pipes, sewers, snowmelt pipes, agricultural and industrial waterways, hot spring pipes, and more. They even claimed they could relax more in a rooftop water tank than in a café heated by a fireplace.

“We haven’t spoken directly since the sunken submarine incident, have we? I am glad we can finally repay you for what you did back then, comrade.”

“You didn’t owe me anything. International law says you should work to assist a sunken or beached ship even if it belongs to another country or group.”

“Everyone might know they should do that, but you were the only person the world who did do it.”

She giggled.

The lady had the sweet atmosphere of the female proprietor of a secret salon, but she did not carelessly invade the boy’s personal space. She was like a bouquet of flowers meant to match one’s outfit. She was intentionally dimming her light to avoid clashing with the sex appeal of the less mature kunoichis behind the boy.

Then again, she was also showing off how much she was holding back.

“That was a delicate region of ocean. Our HQ could not let it get out that we were transporting a treaty-violating weapon through that region, so they pretended not to pick up on our SOS and even jammed our signal while disguising it as interference from thunderclouds. If you hadn’t shown up, 103 Neva members would have perished in that chilly, cramped space. Including me, of course.”

Sugiyado softly sighed.

Murakami Michihiko had said New Sapporo Domain was suffering from the tensions they themselves had created out of fear brought on by the country’s isolationist policies. And to rid themselves of that unease, they were growing into “external threat junkies” who endlessly expanded their military. Sugiyado was pretty sure that was accurate.

At the same time, it was looking like the outside world was full of even more conspiracies and misdeeds than the people in the archipelago imagined.

But for now…

“Babysit him for us.”

“Understood. I won’t even ask what this about.”

“And if you can, I would like to learn what the Empire is doing right now. How pressing do they see the situation with Japan?”

“Why even ask me when you know any answer I give will be designed to benefit the Empire? Just so you know, I am a descendant of the maids who served the very nobles who feared for the country’s future and chose to serve Rasputin cakes laced with cyanide.” She sounded exasperated and shrugged. “There is nothing I can tell you, so you can make your own guesses based on the circumstantial evidence.”

(Well, if they really were preparing for a war on the level of lava bursting up from the earth, Ekaterina’s team wouldn’t still be here in New Sapporo Domain.)

He had guessed that much from the moment she responded to his message.

That meant the question at hand was what to do about Princess Karin, New Sapporo Domain, and the Stonewalls who were getting worked up over nothing.

“What are your immediate plans, Comrade Souha?” Ekaterina giggled in a way that slightly strengthened her sweet aura. “I take it things in the castle are not going well. But the Shogunate as a whole does not appear to be making a move to crush them, so do you maybe need someone to work behind the scenes here?”

“Ekaterina, I will decide what needs to be done here.”

“And I am offering you materiel or personnel if you need them. The Stonewalls have deep roots in New Sapporo Castle, which makes them problem, does it not? If you know what needs doing, then why not go ahead and do it?”

She had just said she would not ask what this was about, and now this.

Never underestimate the intelligence-gathering ability of spies who could hide in any body of water.

“I am not working for the Empire’s benefit here. And another thing, Ekaterina. When trying to get closer to someone, it’s best to let yourself appear more vulnerable.”

“Oh? So you aren’t the type to drown in motherly displays of acceptance?”

Whatever form it took, New Sapporo Domain had indeed managed to maintain a dangerous balance for this long. And just like every other country and group out there, the Cyrillic Empire was not the big bad wolf from a children’s book, but they were also not selfless saints. They would snatch up every opportunity that came along. Even if they did not use their trump card right away, you had to assume it was still there in their deck.

A severe power shortage could cause a blackout in the entire defense system.

If that led to revolution or uprising, another country could possibly use the chaos to attack, but that was an amateurish idea. The Empire was more likely to play the role of cooperative ally from beginning to end and then ask for something equivalent in exchange after the fact. And with a friendly smile on their face all the while.

In her combination of a thick coat and a form-fitting camisole, Ekaterina did not push the issue any further. That lady was an experienced negotiator, so she chose to take a step back here.

“When you have decided what to do, make sure to call the Neva River Nymphs. Whisper the magic word and we will surface from any body of water.”

“I might not be doing anything. Murakami Michihiko is safe now, so I might just decide to leave.”

“No, you will choose to act once you learn what is happening here. This is no different from that submarine. You are not one to weigh the pros and cons before acting, Comrade Souha. That selfless spirit of service is a lovely thing. You would fit in very well with us.”

“…”

“Also.” Just before leaving the crepe food truck, the bewitching woman spoke as if to a child left behind at an amusement park. “I really do want to repay you for your help. As does everyone up on the surface who heard our SOS signal from the submarine but were only allowed to bite their lips and jam it. I won’t deny we have our own plans at play here, but do not forget how I feel.”

That was all.

Once Ekaterina was gone, Sugiyado sighed.

He knew there would be no sign of those river nymphs no matter where you looked on the surface. They had dived underwater.

(Didn’t take her long to incorporate my advice about vulnerability. She always has been quick to follow people’s advice. Although that cute side of her is probably another act meant to draw people in.)

And.

That encounter seemed to have lowered the temperature within the food truck.

Specifically for Ouka and Hoozuki.

“Sensei.”

“First the Kingdom’s queen and now the Empire’s river nymph? You don’t have mistresses in every country around the world, do you?”

They could not hide their exasperation. It was often said you needed to watch out for jealousy and envy when kunoichis gathered, but since ninjas were supposed to use Machiavellianism as a weapon, they really needed to stop letting their own suspicions get the better of them.

The best medicine here would be to firmly deny it.

He had to put them at ease by showing he was confident in his denial. It was a basic but crucial tactic.

“Don’t be dumb, you two. I don’t have a single person you could call a mistress.”

But…

“So you’re saying you do have women all around the world; it’s just that you keep them just distant enough that you can’t call them mistresses?”

“Sensei, there’s such a thing as being too passionate about your work.”

Evidently, he had phrased his denial poorly.

Even on a pirate ship full of outlaws, it was supposedly best to avoid a mixed-gender crew if you wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble.

### 2: Kunoichi Nest

“Heh heh. I knew you would go with mine, Sensei. Welcome to Hanasawa Bara’s love nest!!”

The crepe food truck finally arrived at a proper residence. Sapporo was set up like a go board and Bara had secured a location in the especially messy-looking shopping district of Susukino. That had always been the Hokkaido Area’s leading location for bars and the sex industry, but it had become even more nightless after a major IR move – specifically, establishing a connection with a publicly-run casino. But that was hardly surprising when it was essentially receiving the domain’s seal of approval.

“Eh heh heh, heh heh heh heh heh heh. I missed out on the secret date, but I’m the one who gets to take him home and share his bed!!”

The place had a living room, a VR-equipped home theater system, a simple training room, two indoor baths, and an open-air bath on the balcony that drew water in from a natural hot spring. It also had three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bar counter.

Ouka awkwardly looked around a room large enough to play tennis in.

“What is this place? A hotel? A luxury apartment???”

“It’s an extended stay residential hotel. Maybe those differences are too much for the commonfolk to understand. Just think of it as a villa with a rental contract.”

It was best not to ask how exactly she had managed to get a room like this while keeping her identity secret. Sugiyado only hoped it was something as simple as solving a problem (of her creation) to earn the gratitude of the place’s manager.

Silver ponytail Hoozuki put a hand on her hip and breathed a gentle sigh.

“I guess we can give Bara the bed tonight since we did have her stay behind during our secret date.”

“Sensei, how about a bath? You aren’t in prison anymore, so you can stretch your legs and relax. It isn’t often you can enjoy a natural hot spring as nice as this in a big city.”

He looked over to confirm there were actually two dressing rooms – one for the men’s bath and one for the women’s bath.

“I’ll take you up on that offer.” He sighed. “We can discuss our next move after that.”

“Got it, Sensei.”

A change of clothes was already waiting for him in the dressing room. A full set of his usual clothes plus a bathrobe were neatly folded.

He stripped off his clothes, grabbed a towel, and opened the door to the bath. He found himself on the balcony, so this was apparently an open-air bath. There was not much of a view since it was surrounded by a fence made from bamboo tied together with rope, but it still felt weird to hear the hustle and bustle of the shopping district down below.

He heard some noise from beyond the partition dividing the men’s and women’s baths.

Hoozuki’s voice called over to him.

“I have to know, Sensei. What are you going to do now?”

He washed his sweat away before soaking up to the shoulders in the somewhat whitish bathwater.

He doubted this would do anything for the bolts in his spine or the springs replacing the ligaments in his legs, but he could still feel his body relaxing.

Then he answered Hoozuki’s question.

“To put it simply, I’m going to fulfill my promise to that old man.”

Take care of that kid.

That was all he had promised to Murakami Shouzou, the old man who had saved his life. Michihiko, the man’s grandson, might not want this, but there would be no threat to his life as long as he was in the care of Ekaterina and the others from the Empire. The young man would be free to choose a new life somewhere on Honshu after being given a falsified identity or to leave the country entirely and make a name for himself on the continent.

In that sense, Sugiyado could consider his objective complete at this point.

However…

“Ouka, can you tell me how the Shogunate as a whole will respond to this incident in New Sapporo Domain?”

“Yes, Sensei.”

Ouka’s voice sounded very well-mannered even through the bamboo partition, so she clearly still saw herself as his student.

She also sounded somewhat excited.

“They will probably choose to wait and see how this plays out. It would be concerning if Domain Lord Hatsunaga really has been poisoned by his daughter Princess Karin so she can take his authority for herself, but there is no hard evidence of that at this point. It also is not clear what exactly Princess Karin has done to solve the Hokkaido Area’s power woes. Edo probably considers it too soon to send in a special inspector and freeze New Sapporo Domain’s authority.”

“…”

“And I must remind you that once a ninja, always a ninja. Even if Murakami Michihiko can be perfectly hidden with a new identity created by the Empire, I expect he will be back in New Sapporo Domain sooner or later if the problem here is not resolved. I do not know what connection you have with the Empire, but are they really prepared to continue protecting him indefinitely? Looking after someone long-term costs far more than just saving them the one time.”

A sigh could be heard in the steamy air.

But not from Ouka. It came from Sugiyado as he listened to her.

“Which means I can’t just leave. Not until it wouldn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth.”

That opinion had already been lurking in a corner of his mind.

The Shogunate did not seem aware how serious this was, but Princess Karin now had authority over New Sapporo Domain and might have solved the energy problem, strengthening their previously unstable defensive line. What if the tension about her position went slack? Whether it led her to burn out or act rashly, it would still shake her. What if she got it in her head that she could attack and win instead of just defending? The coming conflict might not remain in the north. There was a chance this could lead to the Cyrillic Empire pushing in toward the entire archipelago. Of course, it could also lead to the Shogunate needlessly invading Karafuto or Vladivostok after the blood rushed to their head.

And.

More than any of that.

Even without Murakami Michihiko’s involvement, if Sugiyado were to back out now, the ones ordered to investigate and resolve the problems in New Sapporo Domain would be Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, and Asagao. If he called it quits and that led to his students losing their lives, the regret and self-loathing would probably lead him to commit seppuku.

He could not back down now.

He had to prepare himself to deal with this.

“Fine. I guess I’ll see this through to the end.”

“Heh heh heh.”

That ticklish laughter seemed to come from Asagao.

“?”

“I knew you would say that, Sensei. Wah ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Things were taking a disconcerting turn.

Most notably, something suddenly parted down the middle like the curtains over a window or the doors to a giant airport storehouse.

What did?

What else but the bamboo partition separating the men’s and women’s baths?

(Are you kidding me!?)

“What are you doing!?”

He immediately backed away in the whitish water, but there was nothing he could do at this point.

“My, my,” said Bara who had set up this stage herself. “This is a ninja hideout, Sensei. And what kind of ninja mansion doesn’t have trap doors and secret contraptions?”

(Stop trying to pass this off as normal!)

However, a true ninja would not lose his cool at a time like this.

The time had come for Sugiyado Souha to maintain a blank expression no matter what.

“You were the one that taught us that a ninja should throw out all assumptions while in enemy territory, so why would you assume that curtains saying ‘men’s bath’ and ‘women’s bath’ meant the actual bath was divided in two?”

Ouka sounded like she was bragging, but she was also ducking down so far into the bath that it covered not just her shoulders but her chin as well. The red of her nose suggested this had turned out to be a lot more embarrassing than in her imagination.

Simply put, this had originally been just the one bath, but they had forcibly split it in two to catch him off guard. All so they could wait until he had moved far enough into the bath for them to surround him.

Four girls in only towels splashed toward him. They were not even wearing the flesh-colored skintight suits of their ninja outfits.

Asagao happily got to the point at hand.

“All we did was confirm that you never do change, Sensei. Heh heh heh. Yes, I knew you would never abandon the people here. And now it’s time to reward you for that!!”

He was only more confused now, but the other girls seemed to understand. Ouka and Bara refused to look him in the eye, but in a bashful way.

At any rate.

If they were going to do this, they could not hold back. They were a former Hidden One and four Elite Ninja kunoichis, but the Stonewalls led by Princess Karin had at least taken control of this entire domain. They could mobilize an army to eliminate just five people, so they could not let their guard down.

They had no time to spare.

A former Hidden One would not be flustered just from his students surrounding him in nothing but towels. He asked a question while keeping as cool an expression as possible.

“Asagao, I want your opinion since you’re the expert.”

“Why aren’t you blushing!? L-look, I just removed my towel below the water. There’s nothing covering me up anymore!!”

“What is the power situation in New Sapporo Domain…no, across the entire Hokkaido Area?”

“Do I need to dive underwater?”

Asagao was soaking up to her shoulders and she made a fearsome threat to the area between his legs before finally giving in and answering him.

“Boo. Looking back at the records for the past 5 years, they’ve had a lot of spontaneous power outages. They all have reasonable explanations like an accident at a transformer substation, a lightning strike, or whatever, but I think there’s a different reason. Especially since the outages are especially frequent during midsummer and midwinter. Based on the number of ordinary households with air conditioning, they seem to be short around 7 million kilowatts.”

Her mental estimation made sexy Bara frown and cross her arms. Some of the whitish water gathered in the cleavage of her large chest.

“That number doesn’t mean much to me.”

“They’re short about what three pressurized water reactor power plants would provide. To be clear, that’s the number of power plants, not the number of reactors.”

The words rattled off by the youngest girl caused Ouka, who was well on her way to mastering the ninja art of water escape, exchanged a look with Cool Beauty Hoozuki.

That meant more than 10 nuclear reactors.

If Princess Karin had appropriated all of that power for herself, what in the world was she using it for? And since handling that much power incorrectly could lead to a major explosion, couldn’t it be weaponized?

That was a level of “debt” that could not be made up just by covering a large field with solar panels or windmills.

“Commercial nuclear reactors require large quantities of coolant water at all times,” continued Asagao, “Assuming they aren’t being used in outer space, the normal method is to desalinate seawater and use that, so nuclear power plants aren’t well suited for large spaces of land like the Hokkaido Area. And sure enough, the area uses a lot of less-efficient thermal power generation. They’re trying to improve that with MHD generators, but it isn’t anywhere near enough. I can see why they’re short on power.”

Whatever the case, they would figure it out in due time.

While soaking in the whitish water, Sugiyado Souha decided they had to start by investigating how Princess Karin was making up for the insufficient power and what danger that method posed. After all, this was the equivalent of three nuclear power plants all at once. It was best not to speculate, but even if whatever-it-was had been built for peaceful purposes, he was pretty sure someone would be able to abuse it.

“…”

He would figure this out.

Before Princess Karin relaxed and carelessly made a devastating choice.

### 3: Target

The following morning arrived.

You might think of ninjas as working in the shadows of the night, but they would operate in the light of day as well. They would act whenever necessary, they would get enough rest to ensure their top performance, and they would always make sure to remain inconspicuous.

However…

“What the hell? Who is this?”

Sugiyado lightly slapped his hand at something soft near his face.

“Ahn, that’s my butt, Sensei.”

“…”

“By the way, if you turn the other way, you’ll be burying your face in Hoozuki’s chest. Who, I might add, is currently borrowing one of your shirts.”

“Bara? And Hoozuki too?”

“There’s no real time limit for dealing with that old man’s case, is there? So why not take a bit of a detour for some pink and milky-white fun with us?”

“I trusted you to not be like this, but maybe I should rethink relying on you here.”

Four figures scrambled from his bed as quickly as they could manage. They all sat down in a row on the wooden flooring. Those students knew how to tell when Sugiyado Souha was willing to put up with some joking and when he was not.

Bara wore a negligee, Ouka wore pastel pajamas, and they all gave each other cautious looks.

“You disgusted him with the horribly cliché choice to use your chest.” (Bara)

“Using your butt seems worse to me. I mean, that’s your lower body.” (Hoozuki)

“The worst one was Ouka. She climbed headfirst under the covers and fell asleep with her face between his legs. And that was very much intentional on her part.” (Asagao)

“Hey, don’t act all pure yourself, Asagao. We all know why you’re wearing those over-the-top panda costume PJs.” (Ouka)

Nothing he said seemed to get through to them.

Technically speaking, they were his former students and were now independent Elite Ninjas. Responding to this oddity in New Sapporo Domain was the expected response for spies who served the Shogunate, so there was no real reason for them to do so under his command. In fact, they could earn a lot of points if they bound him and threw him back into Abashiri’s special prison (even if they were the ones who had broken him out in the first place).

He could not forget that this was not the expected situation. It only worked thanks to so much kindness on their part.

“Now, then.”

Letting that show would only make the kunoichis more self-conscious, so he casually kept it hidden while he too left the bed. He wanted to check on something before he took a shower.

A Fount of Knowledge, a complex device hooked up to various communication devices, sat on the living room’s glass table.

“Let’s see how much this has gathered.”

“Wait, Sensei! Let me use the Fount!”

Asagao hopped to her feet and followed after him. That seemed to restore the flow of time for the other girls because they began to move as well.

Staying focused at all times during an important mission would only lead to burnout. They needed to get a set amount of rest at set times, but anyone who had been up all night worrying about something would know that was much easier said than done. People tended to fall out of their usual rhythm and routine on important days or when not allowed a single mistake. And the effect was greatest when their own life or someone close to them’s life was on the line.

But it was also true that shutting your eyes and falling asleep would cause time to pass.

It was a waste to not use that time to accomplish something.

That was why Sugiyado had altered his phone’s settings to have the device automatically gather information while he was resting. It did not take all that much intelligence to use a crawler to gather data like you were pulling a drain plug in the vast ocean of the internet.

Extremely small Asagao licked her lips as she checked on the device.

“Mechanical data harvesting is fairly indiscriminate, so you end up with a lot. There’s a bit of a trick to filtering the results, so just leave that to me.”

“You make it sound complicated, but isn’t it similar to knowing the best search terms to narrow down the results on a search engine?” asked an exasperated Ouka, but Asagao did not seem remotely bothered.

They were most interested in the core of Princess Karin’s electrical infrastructure, but they were not going to find a specifications document just sitting out there on the open internet.

Still, there were other hints to be found.

The Stonewalls.

The central members of Amamo, Yukizasa, and Oume.

New Sapporo Domain’s classified server had been tampered with to hide those terms, so they held great meaning.

“Here we go.” Asagao seemed to be enjoying herself. “They’re doing a lot to hide their names, but they’ve transported a few cargo containers to different locations. This says they contain…electronic garbage like computers and phones.”

“So pure gold in another form?”

“If you know a little ‘alchemy’, you can get a fair bit from the circuit boards and semiconductors. Since they aren’t crossing the ocean, there’s no need to make payments over fiberoptic where the deal might be discovered.”

“Where are they sending the gold bars in trash form?”

Sugiyado reached over to touch the screen. Asagao twisted her body to complain, but he ignored that.

“The Teine Workshop District in New Sapporo Domain.”

“None of this is concrete.”

Bara was right.

And you could not take their skill in this field lightly. Places like this contained technology even more advanced than global corporations. Modern ninjas like them were pros at preventing the theft of technology by foreign states. They could not exactly do their job without knowing where that technology was found.

In fact, their ninja noses were telling them something here.

Had this been intentionally organized as a collection of small workshops instead of a single major corporation or laboratory so it would not stand out in the paperwork?

It would not be unusual for each individual workshop to be smaller than a convenience store or gas station, but they would cover a 5km square of land when all brought together. If they were all working together as a single large entity instead of competing for survival, then that would be a productive facility with incredible power.

“Is it like taking a skyscraper, cutting apart each division, and spreading those out along the ground, Sensei?”

They used slow-melting artificial snow as an environmental defense policy, two strategic antiaircraft lasers towered up on the outskirts, four 900mm rapid-fire railguns and a moat full of electrolyte liquid sensors protected the castle, and a since-abandoned linear motor train network could be found underground.

This frigid land had large areas of empty space, so the Shogunate’s usual defensive theories did not apply. But who had done R&D on all the equipment used to defend this northern land?

In the modern age, civilian satellite services could be used to search through even the most remote areas of the world, so building a secret base deep in the mountains was meaningless.

However…

“It’s all white, Sensei.”

As Ouka leaned up against him to peer at (Asagao’s) phone, he viewed the satellite and analyzed what he saw.

“That’s probably the artificial snow, but there sure is a lot of it even for the area around New Sapporo Domain. That much seems like it would be a strain on the building rooftops.”

The slow-melting artificial snow was used as an environmental defense.

The idea was for it to slow the advance of an Imperial army arriving from overseas, but that was all hypothetical. Hindering the people’s lives for that would entirely defeat the purpose. And yet there it all was. The thick layer of snow did more than color the image white. It also appeared to obstruct measurements made with infrared and microwave.

Sugiyado chose his words with careful attention to where he was steering the conversation.

“If they’re deploying so much of that ‘defense’, is that some kind of crucial location?”

It only looked like a working class area of plain workshops, but it was actually the same as a company town that controlled the finances of an entire giant automobile factory or semiconductor manufacturer.

“Whether she goes to the Shogunate, the Empire, a company, or a university, Princess Karin thinks relying on someone else for her power means handing them her Achilles heel. That means she will have her own technology division to keep that Achilles heel in her grasp.”

“Is that what this is?” asked Bara.

“It might not look it, but I bet that place has the strictest security. Probably about as difficult as sneaking into an international corporations’ HQ.”

A new electrical system was being set up to recover their defensive infrastructure.

It had to be the equivalent of more than 10 nuclear reactors.

The system used might or might not be dangerous, but Princess Karin and the Stonewalls had at the very least killed one person at Abashiri’s special prison, poisoned the domain lord, and stolen New Sapporo Domain’s authority. Things would not have progressed this far if their reasons were something anyone would accept if they simply explained them.

It would be well worth investigating this (giant strategic military research institute disguised as a) workshop district. Whatever Princess Karin was ultimately thinking, nipping this new electrical system in the bud would mean grasping the Achilles heel of the Stonewalls who had taken over New Sapporo Domain and held great influence over the entire Hokkaido Area.

“Let’s work out a concrete plan,” said Sugiyado. “We don’t have much time.”

“Checking back in time, there are a few facial recognition readings.” Asagao snatched back her phone. “The Stonewalls are hiding their faces to an extent, but they aren’t perfect. Now, I think they’re skilled enough to do a better job, but they get lazy because they know Princess Karin can cover for them.”

“Does that mean one of the other three are defending the shopping district?”

“They appear to be working on a rotation, Sensei. I can’t tell if there’s a schedule or if it’s randomized, but using the most straightforward pattern, I know who will probably be next.”

Perhaps because Asagao herself used her youth as a weapon, she did not hold back the cruel smile as she revealed this information.

“Taganuma Yukizasa. As the youngest, she uses her light weight and short limbs to specialize in combat in closed and dark spaces.”

### 4: Strategic Military Research Institute

The ground and roofs were covered by more than meter of white snow.

This was supposedly out-of-season artificial snow, but the artificial had taken over the natural environment here. It must have had an effect similar to a mist shower because the area felt as cold as the inside of a giant refrigerated warehouse.

This was the Teine Workshop District of northern New Sapporo Domain.

Everything in the city of Sapporo was arranged like a go board, but this one area felt a lot more cluttered and complex. The inconvenience for transportation meant most ordinary traffic avoided the area, so the layout was in fact an intentional way of creating a deserted atmosphere. The place looked like a collection of mid and small-sized city workshops left behind by the times. Without any obvious landmarks like the clock tower, TV station, and New Sapporo Castle, few tourists ever visited. It felt like a place with a closed cycle of locals and only locals.

But all of that was camouflage.

This area buried in white snow had in fact been chosen by Princess Karin as a cutting-edge strategic military research institute that influenced the entire Hokkaido Area’s defensive plans.

Setting up obvious anti-personnel and anti-tank mines or coils of barbed wire would only rouse suspicions, but there were still a variety of traps in evidence. Broken bottles could be seen on the snow as makeshift caltrops, a peek into the back alleys showed kerosene tanks and propane tanks hooked up to wires and switches, and sheets covered in a thick layer of snow would send you tumbling to the ground if you took even a light step onto the rooftops.

It was all very effective without seeming conspicuous if an ordinary person happened to get injured by one.

By using everyday items, the presence of ninjas would not come to light even if the traps were discovered.

It was all very carefully set up that way, showing this was professional work.

That white land was currently being defending by…

(Taganuma Yukizasa.)

At 12, she was the youngest of the four kunoichis at the center of the Stonewalls. She was supposedly an expert at combat in cramped or dark areas thanks to her short height and short limbs.

Her ninja outfit was composed of full-body carbon nanotube chainmail with one piece of cloth around her chest and another around her hips.

Yes.

The girl with semi-long hair used a combination of logical combat and techniques that used her undeveloped body to create an opening.

Her ninja weapon was known as a Beak.

Synthetic rope was wrapped around the butt end of a mountain climbing ice axe to create something similar to a kusarigama. She could move in close and swing it down at her enemy or she could use the rope to swing the weapon around in an irregular fashion, catching at a target’s clothing and keeping them from escaping.

(And she could have it poisoned.)

Altering the type and concentration of poison, she could cause paralysis, pain, delirium, fainting, and even death. It was an exceedingly dangerous weapon that could strike like a scorpion or a spider.

But wait.

If Yukizasa was a kunoichi hidden in the shadows of history, how did Sugiyado know exactly what she looked like? They might have gotten a photo of her face from New Sapporo Castle’s server room, but that would not have told him that the young ninja with semi-long hair used a Beak or wore a chainmail ninja outfit.

The answer was simple.

“There, that’s a good girl. Just go limp and let the darkness take you.”

He snuck up on her from behind.

Sugiyado Souha placed the back of his elbow around the young girl’s slender neck and dragged her into a back alley before using his legs to restrain her torso and arms like a stag beetle’s mandibles.

His down jacket made a sound from the movement.

The girl’s butt had already fallen onto the unmelting snow and she was not recovering anytime soon. She might as well have fallen backwards while carrying a backpack heavier than she was.

He had used a stranglehold that applied pressure to her carotid artery rather than her windpipe.

That would knock someone out in a dozen seconds or so no matter how much they trained or what their lung capacity was.

“––––––”

There was no scream.

She could not escape the pressure, like she was being strangled by the shoulder strap of her own backpack.

She tried to reach a small hand toward a tripwire nearby – perhaps hoping the blast-resistance of her ninja outfit would save her – but she could not attempt a recovery with the explosive trap because his legs were pinning her arms in place.

She clenched her teeth in a desperate attempt to avoid foaming at the mouth and she finally went limp once her adorable eyes rolled back in her head. There was no dignity there. The irregular twitching of the 12-year-old’s young body was no more than convulsions, not conscious actions.

Silver ponytail Hoozuki approached with feet crunching through the white snow and she put an exasperated hand on her hip.

“Sensei, you’re a little too good at this. You’re looking an awful lot like a teacher who loves using corporal punishment.”

“Victory is a physical phenomenon, so don’t let your emotions influence it, Hoozuki. Besides, I would have been in trouble if I tried to attack her head on. I have to throw my air pressure kunais, so we fight best at completely different ranges.”

“Please don’t ruin our secret date by lecturing me.”

He removed his arm and legs from Yukizasa’s neck and torso and let her small body fall unceremoniously to the snow. After running his hands across the minimal curves of her body to check for her possessions, he pulled an ID card, communicator, and other usable items from her pocket and tossed them to Ouka.

Then he lined up her Stonewall ninja tools on the snow: a collapsible shovel, a powerful light used to dazzle an enemy’s eyes instead of as a light source, and the Beak made from an ice axe.

“…”

“Sensei?”

Ouka tilted her head in her ninja outfit while showing no concern for the tripwire nearby.

“There’s more,” he said with a sigh.

He was not done yet. The ninja instructor looked down at his defeated foe and stuck his index finger into her mouth while she lay limp but trembling on the snow.

He ran his finger along the inside of her cheeks, scratched at her back teeth with his nail, and finally tore away and pulled out a filling.

He smiled a little.

It was the look of a soldier after successfully defusing a mine.

“Capsaicin, huh?”

“That’s what’s in chili peppers, so it’s a fairly moral choice as far as ninja drugs go.”

Bara was keeping an eye on their surroundings with her projectiles at the ready and she was familiar with poisons because she would apply various chemicals to the needles of hardened candy she fired from her coilguns.

“It’s usually used to blind an opponent, but it can also be used to help rouse you. If you want to see if it’s taken effect, you can open one of her eyelids and shine a light in her eye.”

“Thanks.”

“Heh heh hehhh. You can always count on me to spice up a secret date☆ All that’s missing now is a romantic aphrodisiac.”

Simply put, the capsaicin filling was a means of forcibly rousing the girl after half a minute or so even if she was caught by surprise and knocked unconscious.

Once her opponent relaxed, assuming she had been neutralized, she could stab them in the back before the giddiness of victory had even worn off. Ninjas did not aim for an undefeated record. They would turn themselves into zombies if it would give them the win in the end.

“Neat, so is it like the Cicada Spray?” said theory-loving Asagao. “I’d heard other schools have something similar.”

“Huh? Cicada?” asked practical Hoozuki who could bring down an armored truck or attack helicopter using her Countless Calamities off-road motorcycle that she could transform into a shuriken launcher or wield as a giant axe similar to a circular saw.

The difference in knowledge there may have come from their difference in individual combat skill. In other words, Asagao was always searching for information because she lacked confidence.

In that case, Hoozuki was the one in trouble. A ninja obviously needed to know their enemy’s weaknesses, but they also needed to know their enemy’s strengths so they could use those to create an opening. Feeling doubt to the point of paranoia was a problem, but the opposite end of the spectrum was arrogance. They needed to strike a balance. Sugiyado made a mental note to give them a refresher on that topic once he had a chance.

Assuming you were, and would always be, the strongest was toxic.

Sugiyado himself had broken his legs and back and been forced to retire after repeatedly pushing himself more and more because he thought he could go “just a little further”.

At any rate, Asagao let out some visible breaths as she laughed in a way too wicked for someone of her age.

“At least it’s only similar. With the real one, if you have a few seconds before passing out, you relax all of your muscles to let everything out. Ammonia is an ingredient in smelling salts, you see.”

That explained the Cicada Spray name.

“I notice you didn’t specify what you’re letting out of where.” Sugiyado sounded impressed. “You’ve matured since I last saw you, Lady Asagao.”

“Sensei, teasing me by drawing attention to it doesn’t seem very nice.”

That was because she had gotten sidetracked on that bizarre topic for no good reason. Bara knew a lot about chemicals and she had only placed a hand on her cheek and sighed. A true lady would know the answer but refrain from giving it. Asagao tearfully scowled at him, so she needed to study up on etiquette a bit more.

Restraining the unconscious kunoichi was simple enough.

Most kunoichis wore ninja outfits made from thin but sturdy materials to help them against bigger or more numerous opponents, so no special ropes or handcuffs were necessary. Pinching the cloth together and tying it like that would “connect” their limbs, torso, and other movable parts, transforming their outfits into inescapable straightjackets.

“I have a question for you four. Is Yukizasa the seduction type?”

“Sensei, don’t you think her body needs to develop a lot more before she can do that?”

Bara crossed her arms to intentionally lift up her large chest inside her oiran-style ninja outfit. That provoked a reaction out of baggy-sleeved Asagao.

“I can charm you just as well as Bara, Sensei! Boobs aren’t anything. Mh, you don’t believe me, do you? I’ll be visiting you tonight, so I hope you’re ready!!”

“What do you think, Sensei?” asked Ouka.

“Probably not,” he replied.

He had only asked them to help him work through his unorganized thoughts.

He continued while making sure to avoid stepping on a handmade bear trap made by breaking apart a commercial lawnmower to expose the thick blades and then burying it in the artificial snow.

“She probably does use her exposed figure to distract her opponent’s thoughts in combat, but no more than that. A ninja who uses full-on seduction would change her tune once she was at a disadvantage, but she showed no sign of that even as she passed out.”

A ninja outfit designed for sex appeal would sometimes be given an intentional weakness to heat or a specific chemical so it could provide defense but also break away on command, but Yukizasa’s was made of purely defensive chainmail. That was probably meant to make up for her small size as the youngest of her group, but she could not escape it once it was used to bind her. And Sugiyado was not against using the methods available to him.

He had knocked her out in an alley entrance, but he chose an even more private location for the rest.

But thanks to his damaged spine, he could not drag even a small 12-year-old around. He got Bara and Hoozuki’s help to hide the small body behind a wooden box in the narrow alley and then placed a blue tarp over her. While making sure to avoid the tripwire connected to a kerosene tank, of course.

The snow was artificial, but the unconscious girl could still freeze to death left lying in it. And waking up would not help her there since she was bound with her own ninja outfit. But her ninja outfit was designed for use in this frigid northern land. As thin as it was, it would still have an insulated design that reflected IR back at herself to preserve her body heat. She would probably be fine left here. Twintails Ouka tilted her head.

“Huh? Shouldn’t you hide her better than that?”

“She wasn’t some guard on the outskirts – she was the center of their security system. Once she stops reporting in, their alert level will go up no matter what we do, so they’ll start a search of the entire area. North New Sapporo Domain’s Teine Workshop District is their backyard, so they’ll find her no matter where we hide her, unless we chop up her corpse and bury the pieces.”

“…”

Ouka gave him an extremely harsh look that said “there are four of us and we could have that done in no time if you gave the order”, but her instructor had something else to say.

“Our presence here will be noticed no matter what, so the question is what we do then. We have everything we need: her ID card, communicator, and a set of Stonewall ninja tools. So let’s get going, Ouka. The rest of you too.”

### 5: Stroll Through the Weapons Plant

The center of New Sapporo Domain was methodically laid out like a shogi board, but this workshop area was an intricate arrangement of narrow roads with lots of one-way and no-entry signs. Not to mention the snow. Not only did it cause visitors to get lost, but certain locations could be cut off from their surroundings by several lesser-used roads.

At first glance, it was not obvious what route to take. Without the use of a satellite service, they would have stood out from their surroundings.

“Continue as planned,” whispered Sugiyado.

In their ninja outfits that perfected a combination of sex appeal and practicality, Ouka, Bara, and Hoozuki vanished upwards in the blink of an eye. They had jumped up to the single-story rooftops with some help from the layer of snow thicker than a meter below their feet. With their physical abilities boosted by the special flexible material of their ninja outfits, a jump like that was nothing. And they were not dumb enough to step on a rooftop trap and tumble back down to the ground along with a thick layer of snow.

Black-haired and white-uniformed Asagao remained on the ground, but…

“W-wait, Sensei, what am I supposed to do? I can’t fight or jump up onto the roofs even with the same equipment as them.”

“…”

“That kind look! I’m the one left behind while the rest enjoy a secret date today, aren’t I!?”

He ignored her protests. When fortunate enough to be working in a group, it was best to leave one person behind so they could respond in case of emergency.

From here on, moving swiftly was more important than blending into the crowd, so he removed his down jacket and tossed it over Asagao’s head while she puffed out her cheeks.

“You wait here. And hold onto that for me.”

“Pwah. I’m not a kitten you can leave at the pet hotel while on vacation! You can’t…you can’t placate me with…ahh, I can feel your warmth. No, I won’t let this work!”

Bara’s manic voice reached them over the radio.

“Oh ho ho! I’m going to be extra demanding today after being left out yesterday, Sensei!!”

He could have called Ekaterina or Murakami Michihiko in for support, but he did not know either of them well enough. He wanted someone he knew would be able to respond immediately.

So he trudged off through the snow on his own.

The entire area was a 5km square, but each individual workshop was smaller than a convenience store. They were all packed in tight, so there was simply not enough time to sneak into each of them to check them out. He wanted to pinpoint target the right one, but they did not know which one was the center.

“Asagao, how’s the data look?”

“Why am I stuck with a no-touching-allowed long-distance internet relationship? Boo. …Anyway, this is tricky. Data security here might be even stricter than at New Sapporo Castle.”

“Because unlike the castle, there’s no defined honmaru or server room.”

It was best to use the process of elimination at times like this.

The warehouse district had no obvious symbols of authority. There was no tenshukaku, president’s office, or other seat of power, but there was also no supercomputer, server room, or centralized manufacturing equipment. All of that had been made as parallel and distributed as possible to avoid having an obvious “giant core”.

But.

What had to be kept all in one place no matter how much they tried to distribute everything?

This northern land’s defense system had been expanded to the point that it required as much power as 10 nuclear reactors to run. No matter what system they used, that would make for one hell of a toy.

Sugiyado sensed a stir up ahead.

The roads here were narrow and labyrinthine, but he still hid himself in an alley off to the side. An old wooden board with several long nails sticking out of it was left on the ground nearby, presumably to act like a beartrap.

“…”

The combined electricity/gas/water meter on the wall nearby was displaying a warning color on its small LCD screen.

Something was wrong.

But this was not just an electrical or gas leak.

There were no sirens sounding, but that may have been borrowing the logic of submarines. Everyone in the area had been swiftly and silently notified to not give away their presence. Most likely, every worker and guard in the 5km area had received an emergency email on their mobile devices.

A few roars of engines he guessed belonged to snowmobiles passed by on the road he had just vacated. They had the light but violent roar of a chainsaw.

(That’s fine. I figured we would be detected eventually.)

This was effectively a defense weapon development base maintained by the Stonewalls, so they would have a failsafe in place. If an enemy attack was detected, they would have to go through a few steps.

For example:

1. Lock down all the major entrances and exits so no one else could get in or not.

2. Use overwhelming numbers to search out and restrain the intruders.

3. Report any human or material damage or theft and run a search for any bombs or traps that might have been set up.

And they were using as much energy as 10 nuclear reactors, so…

4. Temporarily shut down any dangerous experiments underway behind the thick walls.

No one would want to be killed by their own invention blowing up.

People’s actions were a reflection of their heart.

Blindly making waves would never end well, but if you put together a careful plan, knew where to look, and made careful observations, you could learn something from it.

That said, ninja strategies lacked a decisive blow. Ninjas sought two kinds of power: the power to put together a detailed plan and the power to adlib their way through problems.

So they generally played things by ear.

He chose to follow this route to the center since their presence had been noticed, but if their opponent had behaved differently, he would have taken a different route to his goal.

“Now, then.”

Once he heard some dogs released nearby, he climbed onto a nearby rooftop and abandoned the surface route.

Nowhere here was safe.

It never was in enemy territory.

The rooftops were also covered in a thick layer of snow. Step in the wrong spot and you would fall to the ground along with a slipping sheet and the snow on top of it. In some areas, the snow melt cables had been intentionally shorted to leave a high-voltage current for someone to unwittingly stumble across. He had to assume the traps were more dangerous in the places ordinary people would never tread.

“…”

When he took a careful look from above, he saw some guards equipped with cross-country skis that could be folded up and stored in the shin of their boots. They gave some instructions to a large dog and then moved elsewhere. They were also equipped with submachineguns that had a grip and a ski pole built in, so they were presumably meant to be fired from the hip while aiming with a laser pointer. All this equipment confirmed his suspicions that these were Stonewall ninjas.

(They may have sealed the place off, but it’s a big area. Some footprints in the snow isn’t enough to put them on alert.)

Then there was the dog. His back felt funny at 5kg and it exploded with pain at 10kg, so he would be trapped if he was pinned by a dog of that size. He needed to be careful.

They photographed his footprints.

If he wanted to avoid being caught that way, he needed to change the soles of his shoes. Plus, how he carried his weight could be used to identify him. His own legs felt weird with every step he took thanks to the extra sole and insole he was using.

That was a pain, but he looked way from his feet.

There were a surprising number of people around. Some of those were of course pursuing the intruder that had entered the strategic military research institute known as the Teine Workshop District and that had taken out On-Site Commander Taganuma Yukizasa, but there was something else going on as well.

It felt like he was seeing a scattered minority trying to escape while the majority were on the attack.

For example, he saw a teenage girl who did not look like the fighting type and he saw an old lady wearing a workshop jumpsuit. The trick to being a courier was not to be strong and tough. It was to be nondescript enough to never stand out in a crowd. In that sense, they were perfect.

Because they were not acting.

No one acted more naturally than an actual amateur. That was why careless travelers might end up with a strange plastic bag shoved in their travel bag at the airport while they were not paying attention. In the same way, these people may not have been told what it was they were carrying.

“…”

He found that much more interesting, so he spoke into the small mic hidden below his scarf.

“Ouka, Bara. I’ve marked some runners who look like amateurs to me. Cut off their escape and restrict their available routes. Hoozuki, you provide backup.”

“Will do, Sensei.”

Ouka sounded excited.

He had only climbed onto the roof to prevent the dog from following his scent and there was no completely safe place here, so he hopped down from the roof at a convenient place and then moved below the eaves. He made sure not to step on any of the makeshift caltrops made with broken bottles while he waited for a surveillance drone to pass by overhead.

“Coordinate DD32. Using ID card in 3, 2, 1…”

As Ouka made her countdown, the drone unnaturally turned back the way it had come. Just as he heard the quiet roar of a snowmobile engine on another street, several bullet-shaped objects flew from one roof to another.

“…”

Word of Yukizasa’s defeat would have reached them by now, so what would happen when Ouka used the stolen ID card? But that could be extremely useful when you wanted to put the hornet’s nest in a frenzy.

While security was focused in that direction, Sugiyado stealthily pursued the amateur girl and old woman.

(Okay.)

The more intense the defense team, the more the escape team stood out by moving in the opposite direction.

They might as well have been dunked in glow-in-the-dark paint.

They also cautiously (or fearfully) avoided the area where Ouka had used the ID card knowing it would be detected. As amateurs, they were not going to take the long way to check for anyone tailing them and they did not know how to use diversions or distractions.

But even though he could defeat amateurs like this with ease, Sugiyado did not immediately go in for the attack. He observed them from a reasonable distance to figure out where they were headed.

The answer surprised him.

“Asagao, I’d like some analysis. What is this?”

“So you can’t forget how sweet my presence is even when we’re apart? Grin, grin. Anyway, that’s officially designated as a park, but it’s effectively an empty lot since they removed all the playground equipment and banned playing there with a ball or whatever because it’s too dangerous.”

“So it’s really nothing? Not what I expected.”

The rectangular space was about half the size of a soccer field and covered in more than a meter of white snow.

The escape team had gotten here ahead of him, so where had they gone?

He had retired from active duty, but he still had the skills he had built up.

He was not about to lose sight of an amateur.

The footprints in the snow just stopped all of a sudden and there was no sign of a car or snowmobile having driven through.

They could not have been picked up by helicopter either. He would not have overlooked a hot-air balloon, flying car, or any other vehicle flying through the wide-open sky.

They must have used some other method.

This area had none of the traps made with everyday items…but that did not mean it was unimportant. They might have chosen not to lay any traps here because a normal person stepping on one could end up drawing attention to the place.

He looked down at where the footprints completely vanished.

“Wait, could it be?”

“Sensei?”

He put off answering Ouka’s question over the radio.

“Asagao, you must have already checked on the map. I want to know how deep the snow is here.”

“Since it’s artificial, you can’t use the weather maps for that. But if we can trust the laser measurement data, it’s 103cm in that area.”

“Is it really?” He had no proof of this, so he naturally grew more cautious in his wording. “Laser measurements are taken by sending IR down from a satellite, measuring the reflection, and comparing the result to the actual terrain. But that tells you more than just the altitude. You can combine the results to give yourself an accurate 3D diagram, similar to lining up gourd slices.”

“What’s your point, Sensei?” asked Asagao.

“But that only works when no one messes with the process. If someone sets up shiny mirrors or black carbon pigments that absorb any wavelength, the results will come back wrong. Then what about this place? The entire place is covered with unnatural artificial snow.”

“Oh.”

“The Stonewalls have been raising the land little by little while changing the reflectivity of the artificial snow so the satellite’s laser measurements won’t notice. The environmental defense policy lets them keep this snow out here year round, so no one would even notice if the ground below the hardened snow had been lifted, even by more than a meter. Or if the space below had been dug out to create a giant igloo or cave.”

“So is that park itself a giant lab?” gasped Bara over the radio.

“B-but wait a second, Sensei,” cut in Ouka. “We don’t know the scope of their experiment, but aren’t they ultimately trying to build a medium that can produce more energy than 10 nuclear reactors? You’re only talking about snow and ice. I doubt that could physically shield against an emergency!”

She had a point.

Or she would have if this snow had fallen from the sky and the ice had frozen on a lake.

“They used a special plastic,” he bluntly stated. “Something like polystyrene. It’s harder than metal and extremely light, so I bet they hid it below the snow.”

“You’re kidding, right? We’re talking about a lab that manages more energy than 10 nuclear reactors. I don’t know how much they built up the area using the snow, but you would need dozens of meters of that special plastic to create a physical barrier capable of preventing disaster!”

“What if it could change shape to redirect impacts, just like your ninja outfits do?”

That idea overturned the idea of heavy armor or a solid fortress.

But it was not a crazy idea.

They could do it here.

“They use an emulsion. Water and oil tend not to mix, but with a surfactant, they will appear to behave like a single mixed liquid. That was used to create the polystyrene plastics.”

“But doesn’t that end once it hardens?” asked Bara. “I doubt that would provide the muscle-like flexibility you’re talking about.”

“It hasn’t hardened.”

“Then how is it any different from a gooey adhesive?” asked Asagao.

He smiled a little at that.

Preconceptions were hard to shake.

“With an emulsion, Particle A and Particle B might appear to mix together, but they never actually combine and become a different substance. It’s more like B slips into the gaps between A. But if you mess with the water molecules filling that space, A and B will behave very differently. Did you forget, Bara? And Asagao too? New Sapporo Domain has the perfect toy for this.”

“Oh,” he heard Asagao say over the radio.

He nodded.

“The slow-melting artificial snow, which you can see all around you. That snow has clearly been altered in some way since it doesn’t melt at ordinary temperatures. If they combined that with the high-polymer water-absorbing gel used in your ninja outfits, then it’s doable. By controlling the water molecules that act as the solidifying core, they can create a new plastic that freely switches between rigid and flexible.”

The usual assumptions of construction did not apply here.

What should harden, did not. And what had supposedly hardened would ignore the usual rules by growing soft once more.

Ninja outfits were so thin they had more or less become a part of the wearer’s skin, yet they could hold back the force of a bullet. In the same way, a decently thick layer of this plastic could be placed over the lab to eliminate the risks presented by an accident.

Because…

“…”

A heavy rumbling reached him.

He slowly turned around to see a gray giant had partially crushed the roof of a small workshop across the road.

They already had it working at a military level.

This cutting-edge fighter was made by strengthening a slender girl’s body, with a focus on the arms and legs, and simply giving her thicker armor. A smooth mass of fine-tuned plastic stood over three meters tall.

It produced a sound like a pressure cooker or locomotive, so it may have used steam power.

Destroying the building’s roof seemed to have set off a few traps using tripwires or electrodes. Explosions and sparks from high-voltage lines scattered around, but the giant did not seem to care. Nor had she taken any noticeable damage.

The smooth surface gave off an unnatural rainbow light similar to a soap bubble or the surface of a movie disk. The unique structure was probably refracting the light. From the look of that, simple explosions would be useless and even a warship’s laser beam would only melt the surface a little while most of its power was deflected away.

This next-gen powered suit determined the behavior of an emulsion by messing with the core of water molecules that decided how hard the special plastic would be. Part of that likely used the same high-polymer water-absorbing gel found in the kunoichis’ ninja outfits.

If so, it could do more than just protect against bullets and explosions in combat. By adjusting its flexibility on command, it could also boost the wearer’s physical abilities.

Something was staring at Sugiyado from the center of the gray.

“Found you.”

It was Taganuma Yukizasa.

That youngest of the Stonewall elites used the humiliation burning inside her to get her murderous internal combustion engine running.

He had saved her life.

He had let her live when he could have killed her.

But she apparently had too much pride to view it that way.

Instead, his failure to finish her off only inspired more anger and humiliation over her defeat. The young kunoichi bit her lip and then gave a roar as if releasing all of the emotions built up inside her.

“I’ve found the intruder!!”

### 6: The Stonewalls in their Element

Now that their eyes had met, there was no peaceful route out of this. Mutual understanding was generally presented as a beautiful thing, but not so in the ninja world. Understanding was meant to be a one-way thing. You never sat at the same table and any location containing two ninjas of different affiliations was known as a battlefield.

But before they got started, Sugiyado made sure to say one thing using the small mic on the inside of his scarf. While making sure the scarf would keep her from reading his lips.

“Change of plans. Ouka, you infiltrate the depths of the park. You can find the entrance and do that, can’t you? Hoozuki, you support her. I’ve already been spotted by Yukizasa, so I’ll draw her away along with as many other enemy troops as I can. That should give you more room to work, but make sure you don’t get caught while I draw them away.”

“Sensei, what should I do?” asked Bara.

“I hate to ask this, but could you support me? But you haven’t been spotted yet, so use your hair coilguns. Load your heavy Tatami Needles and focus on sniping from a safe distance while staying on the move. You’re the best one for that job.”

“Yes! A personal request for a one-on-one secret date!! Joint work with Sensei☆”

“Tch. That sounds way more fun,” complained Ouka.

He heard the heavy sound of someone jumping. Heavily-equipped Yukizasa had jumped toward him, crushing a small workshop’s roof in the process. She was not just landing near him. She intended to crush him with her weight. If that was a mass of pure plastic, it would weigh 500kg, making it about the same as a light car. And if it was also bulletproof and blast-resistant, then it would probably weigh even more.

“!?”

He reflexively drew two air-pressure kunais from the bottom of his short-sleeve dress shirt, but that was not going to accomplish much. Even if he killed Yukizasa at the core, the plastic armor would still crush him. The moment she landed was his biggest opportunity, but he could only use that to roll out of the way. After that, he left the park and ran into the labyrinthine streets.

She did not seem bothered by this.

She must not have expected to actually kill him with the first move. She showed no real surprise and pursued him like nothing had changed. She approached with the intensity of construction machinery. She tripped more and more of their own wires and IR beams, stepped on lawnmower beartraps and glass shard caltrops, and triggered all sorts of explosions.

If she caught up to him, he was done for. He could not escape a rush from those massive fists.

Taganuma Yukizasa was an expert at fighting in closed and dark places.

That stance remained unchanged. If he was not confident in his ability to emerge victorious after grappling with those wrecking ball arms, he had to avoid engaging her in high-speed infighting.

Besides, defeating her was not his goal.

His goal was to investigate what was hidden in the Teine Workshop District and destroy it if necessary.

This battle was unnecessary and he would gain nothing by insisting on victory at the cost of his own life.

“But she isn’t going to let me go either.”

“Why the hell would I? I don’t know who you are, but you’re telling me everything. While I smash your body beyond recognition, one piece at a time!!”

Her killer intent hit him like a physical blow.

Blatant threats had a way of making people flinch, but that did not work against trained ninjas.

Her giant gray powered suit was made from a miraculous plastic created by messing with water molecules. It had an average range of between two and three meters. Sugiyado had to continually fall back to stay out of that range, but no matter how persistently she moved that giant body toward him, she could not reach him. Given the size of the suit, she should have been able to just reach out and grab him at this range.

“Shh!!”

He threw a Fierce Fang air pressure kunai from close enough range that it was more like stabbing with a spear than launching a projectile. The instant nitrogen foam contained in the grip converted it into a tool that harnessed a maximum of 15 tons of force to pry open even a tank’s hatch if the tip was stabbed into the crack. However…

“That ain’t gonna work!” she roared.

Her powerful arm flew through the air and caught a nearby wall along the way. The storm of rubble altered the air pressure kunai’s path.

Just then, he heard a dull thud and the 3m giant tilted to the side. It was a lot like a bat had been swung into the side of her head, but yet again…

“Wow, that thing’s solid!!”

(Not even Bara’s Tatami Needle can get through? But that’s a depleted uranium alloy!!)

A second and third shot hit Yukizasa, but they were equally ineffective.

The impacts themselves were reaching the girl.

But that suit was made from a special transformable plastic, so she may have prepared bags of resupply pellets and hidden them in the snow around here. It was no problem for her if the suit took damage.

(Which means…)

Retrieving every trace of his projectiles would have to come later. He memorized the amount and location and then fell back. His goal was to draw the enemy away and create an opening for Ouka or Hoozuki to safely and successfully sneak into the secret base, but that would all fall apart if he was taken out here. He had ordered them to infiltrate that place, so he had to assist in their escape as well.

“What the hell!? What school are you from? Tell me, cause this isn’t making any damn sense. I’m getting answers here even if I have to crush your bones and squash your flesh until you’re nothing but goop inside!!”

Yukizasa shouted angrily and violently swung her artificially long arms. That kind of yelling was not very ninja-like, but it may have been an intentional switch she threw. Anger kept people from thinking logically, but that made their actions harder to predict.

Close-quarters combat required reading your opponent with lighting speed. If you wanted to be aware of the danger you faced while also spicing things up a bit, powerful emotions could do the trick. Of course, that was a high-risk, high-return doubled-edged sword. It relied on offense being the greatest defense. The idea was to take some hits in order to defeat your opponent before they could defeat you.

“Not bad for someone so tiny.”

“Shut the hell up!”

Just as her anger burned even hotter, he heard the chainsaw-like rumbling of a light engine. It was leaving the large park(?) and returning to the labyrinthine workshop district, but it came from overhead.

It was a snowmobile.

Several of the vehicle were leaping from one snow-covered rooftop to another and they were unsurprisingly driven by the Stonewalls who protected this disguised strategic military research institute (and who Princess Karin had turned into her own private force).

“This is our backyard.”

The snowmobiles generally carried two.

One was driving and the other was wielding a firearm.

“Don’t assume you can escape after messing with us. Time is on our side. We just have to call in more and more reinforcements to cut off every avenue of escape. Just like tearing off a bugs legs one by one!!”

The snowmobiles crisscrossed overhead like they were knitting wool, but after instantly noting their equipment and locations, Sugiyado grinned boldly.

“Bara, load a Tatami Needle and attack the snowmobile carrying an anti-tank rocket.”

With a thud, one of the land vehicles rotated unnaturally as it soared through the air between rooftops. The gunner in the rear seat had been trying to fire an explosive on fleeing Sugiyado to damage him even if the shot was not perfect, but the extra rotation caused their aim to veer way off.

“Yes, Sensei,” said Bara’s cheerful voice in his earpiece. “You really know how to ask a girl for a favor☆”

The anti-tank rocket’s aim shifted from Sugiyado Souha to Taganuma Yukizasa as she pursued him.

“You dumb-!?”

The small kunoichi’s protest was cut off by the rocket hitting and detonating.

Rockets were general-use weapons, but they had originally been designed to break through a tank’s armor. Not even that gray powered suit would escape this unscathed.

Sugiyado was close enough to be blown backwards by the blast, but Yukizasa had taken the brunt of it.

This was an away game for him, but that was not reason to be shy. He had to think of it as a chance to fight in a way he could not on his home field.

If he was short on firepower, he only had to borrow some from his opponent. Ninjas usually traveled light and tended not to have much firepower, so using the confusion of the battlefield to cause friendly fire among the enemy was a standard method.

The gray powered suit fell onto its back while armor shards scattered everywhere.

It triggered a few of their own traps as it fell, so some smaller explosions followed.

“Go to…hell!”

But.

It ended about how Sugiyado had expected it to.

The breaking of the armor must have kept the destructive force from reaching the human body within because the young kunoichi got up from the snow while still wielding that giant body even as it fell apart.

This was not over.

She could still move.

“Go to hell, you intruderrrrrrs!!”

She really did seem to have supply materials hidden in the snow because the holes in the thick gray armor were filled back in as if the nearby snow and ice itself were being absorbed.

Sugiyado stayed calm and swung his right hand.

He threw a Fierce Fang, lodging the weapon inside the special plastic as it repaired itself.

It landed in the very center of her flat chest.

“Uh!?”

“Be warned: that isn’t a normal kunai.”

He would have a hard time retrieving that projectile once it was absorbed within that strange plastic device, but the air pressure kunai was a ninja tool he had developed on his own after retiring and he had never registered it with the Shogunate. Unlike active duty ninjas like Ouka or Bara, they could not reveal his identity by searching the weapon in a database. He had managed to keep that tool hidden during his unofficial trial after the previous incident.

“I’m sure your ninja outfit inside that thing is bulletproof and blast-resistant, but can it rival a tank’s armor? If not, I would recommend not testing it. Once it bursts, your broken ribs will shred your lungs.”

“…”

He heard the sounds of several people kicking off the snow.

He was now surrounded by ski troops and snowmobiles on the rooftops. The gunners in the back seats were aiming submachineguns or semi-auto sniper rifles his way, but he did not seem to mind.

“I don’t care either way.”

He twirled another Fierce Fang in his hand.

It looked like he was holding a serious negotiation, but that was an illusion. He was buying time. So he wanted to force as humiliating a choice as possible onto the kunoichi and while she was in front of so many of her subordinates. That way he could keep her from making the choice right away.

“Will you give up and let me through, or will you recklessly challenge me and lose your life? I will be walking through here either way. The question is how alive you will be when I do so. The choice is yours.”

“Sensei, I’m in.”

Ouka’s voice reached him over his earpiece, so he made an estimate of how much more time he would have to buy. She was inside, so that just left searching the interior of the facility and then escaping. Just like in a video game, these things were most difficult the first time through. Everything went much faster during a replay when you already knew where to go.

Yukizasa bit her lip in front of him.

But she was unable to repair her gray armor any further.

She glanced up at her subordinates on the roofs.

She shut her eyes, sighed, and finally made up her mind. Would she live or die? There was only one possible choice.

“Okay, I’ll-”

“You will do nothing of the sort. No Stonewall would make that choice.”

A carefree voice cut her off from overhead.

It came from even higher up than the ski troops and snowmobiles on the trap-covered rooftops.

(Oh, no!)

“Yukizasa!!”

Sugiyado Souha shouted a warning, but the girl herself was only staring up in puzzlement.

Then, with a blast of explosives, a hail of metal skewers rained down from directly above. The projectiles were so numerous they covered an entire area like a falling spiked ceiling, leaving the target nowhere to run.

There was no scream.

Only the high-pitched shattering of the thick plastic armor.

The young ninja lay collapsed on the white snow.

That had come from a large axe made from bundles of small wires. The blade was covered with tightly-packed bundles of metal like a toothbrush, so when they were detonated from within, they would transform into countless sharp projectiles.

This was one of the Stonewall elites.

Which of those kunoichis had specialized in the use of explosives from a medicinal and chemical perspective, with a specialty in mine blasting?

“Horisato Oume!?”

(But our intel said they guarded Teine one at a time on a rotation!?)

Sugiyado analyzed the situation as calmly as he could manage while Oume easily landed on the snowy road.

Did they randomize even their security system itself?

That sounded simple enough, but thoughtlessly attempting that would only create confusion among their ranks from communication failures and the like. In the worst case, the unnecessary hierarchy of information would breed distrust among their own people. If they were doing that, they must have solid enough control over their communications to eliminate those risks. That would take considerable skill.

Oume’s long black hair was tied at the end and a sweet scent came from skin so white it seemed to be born of this snowy land.

The boy narrowed his eyes a little.

She was an explosives and blasting specialist. He could not keep the same distance he had from Yukizasa who specialized in extreme close range. Her fighting style would be entirely different.

She gave off a definite sex appeal even through her loose-fitting shrine maiden outfit. The way it was close to slipping off of her altogether suggested she was a travelling shrine maiden who journeyed across the land – as opposed to one who served a particular shrine – and who had lost her faith and ended up making a living through sex work. Of course, that was all camouflage meant to hide her identity as a kunoichi. Also, those corrupted shrine maidens had not worked in the well-maintained red light districts and brothels of the big cities. They had worked in the rural areas without such facilities – such as at a mine where many brawny men labored.

Horisato Oume.

She must have had belts wrapped around her body because, when she held her own body tight, glass cylinders emerged from the slits all over her shrine maiden outfit. How large an explosion could she cause with one of those containers no larger than a relay baton?

“We are all here for the hunt. I do wish Princess Karin would wait further inside where she is better protected, but that is a lost cause since you could say she was born for the battlefield.”

“…”

It would be wrong to blame Ouka or Asagao for the faulty intel. Information warfare was standard for ninjas. When everyone was working to deceive and infiltrate each other in lieu of trading physical blows, you were never going to escape entirely unscathed.

Perhaps Sugiyado should have realized the truth himself when he saw the heavy firepower the snowmobilers and skiers were using. People who worked in the mountains did need to know how to fire a gun to protect themselves from wild animals. They had to know how to shoot and how to avoid mistaking a person for an animal. These were the faithful subordinates trained by Oume, the explosives specialist, not of Yukizasa who specialized in closed and dark spaces.

“Sen…sei.”

“Ouka? Hoozuki?”

“I found it. I actually found it,” said Ouka. “I’ve arrived in the lab that hides their new power source deep underground, but is this…is this really what we were pursuing here?”

“We can talk later, Ouka!” said Hoozuki. “They’re coming! Is that Amamo who specializes in terrain effects!? Dammit, it really is like seeing a dragon hidden in the earth!!”

An unnatural tremor shook the ground below his feet and the snow fell from the rooftops.

It sounded like he was no the only one who had run into unexpected trouble.

“Asagao, this hasn’t gone as planned. I can handle myself, so you support those two’s escape.”

“Ksh, kssshhh!!”

“Her too!? Goddammit!”

He could not tell if Asagao was being jammed or if she had been physically attacked, but something was happening to her when she was supposedly outside the battlefield. Princess Karin’s Stonewalls had a longer reach than he had expected. His group had thought they were sneaking in relatively undetected, but the tables had been turned in no time. He could not let this continue. If he just let time pass, he would only be allowing true tragedy to strike.

“What do we do, Sensei!?”

(So Bara’s fine.)

She could directly fight using her Serpent Monster hair coilguns or she could ensnare people with her sex appeal and disguises. Having her meant a lot.

There was no such thing as safety or a sure thing on a ninja battlefield. Every step of the way, you had to tap the stone bridge ahead of you to see if it remained solid. So when things did not go according to plan, you had to use your best guesses based on experience. He had to work out where the greatest risk lay and who he could save to set off a chain reaction that would ultimately get them back on their feet.

He could only make one move.

Everyone’s future would be determined by where he chose to move Bara who would be a rook or bishop in shogi terms. If he chose poorly, he could have his piece taken, leading to their utter defeat.

“…”

He had to choose now.

And Sugiyado Souha gave a clear order in front of the enemy.

“Bara, go into hiding. Don’t touch anyone.”

The silent head tilt came from sexy Oume with her shrine maiden outfit nearly falling off of her.

“My, my, my.”

She had thoroughly trained herself to speak in a way that intentionally got under the skin of anyone listening, making them lose their cool. Wielding a blade was not the only way to fight. Even the way she swayed her body like she was waiting for a customer on the side of the snowy road was a part of her “attack”.

That was enough to tell him she was a master of direct combat and sex appeal. She was similar to Bara in that way, but still different. While Bara took control with the sweet candy, Oume took control with the lash of the whip.

“Holding someone back now? True, thoughtlessly placing a hidden piece on the board only to have it immediately taken would be the height of folly, but are you really in any position to hold back? We already have you all in checkmate. You do understand that, don’t you? I refuse to believe you don’t.”

He was surrounded by ominous metallic sounds. The guards (who were actually ninja subordinates well-trained by Oume) had stepped down from their snowmobiles and aimed their assault rifles, submachineguns, semi-auto sniper rifles, and even shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Guns were equally deadly no matter how much or little ninja training given to the person pulling the trigger.

“What option do you have but to place your sacrificial pawn on the board and make a run for it?” Oume smiled seductively. “It is either that or be turned to Swiss cheese.”

“That’s what you want me to do.” Sugiyado did not hide his vicious smile. “You detected our actions and moved in ahead of us. I’m not ashamed of falling for a trap if it took all of the Stonewall elites, including Princess Karin herself. …But even after all that, you missed one. You needed to get rid of us all, but you failed. So you’re trying really hard to make up for that, but it won’t change a thing. Our shark has dived below the waves. And you can’t rest easy as long as even one of us is still free.”

“…”

Don’t let her rattle you.

Ouka and Hoozuki had only encountered a powerful foe. The battle was not over yet. Amamo’s skill was an unknown, but it was two-against-one.

He had lost contact with Asagao, but that did not mean she had been physically eliminated. It would be easy to set this up by jamming all of the radio frequencies they were using.

And Bara remained entirely outside the Stonewalls’ field of view.

This attack had left a major impact, but that was no reason to act rashly. He could not let Oume lead him astray when they were not losing yet.

The ones actually sweating bullets here were the Stonewalls after their attack with all four of them had failed to achieve the desired results.

“And you can’t shut down the entire fishing grounds, so you’re stuck. You were trying to rattle us with lies, but maybe you should have waited a while longer before purging Yukizasa.”

“My people will use their bullets to shred your body starting from the hands and feet and working inwards. Then it won’t be long before your companion disobeys your orders and comes running. Once we have drawn out your last hidden fighter, our checkmate will be complete.”

“I’d rather you didn’t do that.” Sugiyado slowly spun the air pressure kunai in his hand. “And what makes you think my plan was to run away?”

He threw something down at his feet and white powder spread out across the entire area.

“Wha-!?”

Oume’s eyes widened, but it was already too late.

Snow covered everything here and that Fierce Fang was a special ninja tool that could create 15 tons of force using an instant nitrogen foam more powerful than an airbag. By removing the foam cartridge and throwing it against the ground, he could block their view with snow.

All it did was blind them.

It was an alternate form of the dramatic smokescreen.

But…

(If they can’t see, they can’t fire their guns no matter how much I’m surrounded. Those subordinates will be too afraid of accidentally hitting their commander to do anything.)

Even the classics had their uses.

Sometimes a threat not found in the good, old days became an oddly perfect match. This workshop district was covered in countless traps made with everyday items, but he had discovered that there were almost none on the main roads. Otherwise the ordinary people passing through would get hit.

And Sugiyado Souha had hinted to Oume that he did not plan to run away.

“Shh!!”

“!?”

He took off running.

This was the exact opposite of when he was fighting Taganuma Yukizasa earlier. The safest place in this case was right up in front of the sexy traveling shrine maiden. That would prevent the guards from firing on him for fear of hitting their commander and it would prevent Oume from using her own explosives and blasting. No one would want to be blown away by their own bomb.

However.

He also could not hope for any support from the long-distance coilguns.

This was entirely reliant on his own skill now.

It was one-on-one.

He tore through the thick curtain of pure white to approach Horisato Oume. He of course held an air pressure kunai in each hand.

“Really!?”

Oume jumped back a few steps and swung a few glass cylinders the size of relay batons. But not to ignite them.

Explosives were a type of chemical.

By mixing several of them together in the right quantities, they could become a chemical with an entirely different effect.

For example, a poison gas that had already begun destroying the red blood cells flowing through your blood vessels by the time you sensed its sweet scent.

However.

Once again…

“It…didn’t work!?”

Instead of using another air pressure kunai, he swung around his long scarf. The clothing swelled out with air and captured the floating white snow.

The snowflakes mixed with the air caught the makeshift poison gas and dropped it to the ground.

Sexy Oume’s eyes widened.

“Was that a variation on the Rain Puddle!?”

“A poison spray made from toxic plants or jellyfish tentacles won’t work on a rainy or humid day.”

Once he had neutralized her thick poison gas barrier, the rest was easy. He detonated another instant nitrogen foam cartridge at his feet, slid badly-injured Yukizasa to the right side of the road, and continued toward his real enemy. He arrived dangerously close for someone who specialized in explosives and firearms.

He held an air pressure kunai in each hand and their tips rushed in toward Horisato Oume of the Stonewalls!!

“Tch!!”

Oume must not have had any other choice at this point. she beat at the air with her baggy sleeves to spread them out and twirled her entire body around.

The movement was as beautiful and light as a dance dedicated to a god.

But.

The air pressure kunais’ tips were pushed back with a sound much too violent and distorted for such a dance. Her circular motion carried the weight and edge of a guillotine. From his perspective, her shrine maiden sleeve had hardened as it grew gray and petrified. It transformed into a dull blade much like a rusty axe blade.

(Stone dust!?)

That was originally a fire extinguishing powder sprinkled around in a mine to stop a dust explosion chain reaction. Oume readily used explosives in closed spaces and indoors, so it made sense for her to carry some around for protection. And Sugiyado had heard it could harden and lose all effectiveness if it absorbed the moisture from the air.

This was not its intended use.

She had been caught in a bind when his snow smokescreen kept her subordinates from using their guns and then neutralized her poison gas with his Rain Puddle ninja technique. But she had instantly turned the tables on him with this new idea. She had the flexible thoughts and the powerful drive to take advantage of any accidents and of her enemy’s attacks. That girl in a shrine maiden outfit really was skilled.

“!!”

It was now Sugiyado’s turn to move himself out of the way.

Her large sleeves spun around with a circular motion based on the movement of her arms and torso. He responded like he was being attacked by metal balls attached to short chains. A single hit here would easily shatter human bone.

(That isn’t her only weapon. Just like a bayonet, the point is to hold back any enemies that get too close. If I keep my distance, she’ll start using the artillery and explosives she specializes in!!)

If he could stab in just the tip of his Fierce Fang, the door-opening power would force the crack open. Its 15 tons of force was enough to pry open a tank’s hatch.

But he could not use that force without first stabbing the weapon into the target.

(In that case.)

He struck with his right kunai.

He doubted his first strike would kill. He expected her petrified sleeve to deflect it, so he used that momentum to twirl around. He built up speed as if for a roundhouse kick and made a horizontal strike with his left kunai.

“It’s no use!!”

She was using an improvised weapon and she seemed to be only barely holding him back, but he was not trying to increase the kunai’s piercing power.

He struck at the air.

Several snowflakes reached the left kunai’s surface and the frictional heat melted them.

He made sure they were refreezing when he clashed with Oume.

What would happen then?

He did not need to stab the Fierce Fang into her.

Not if he used the ice like glue to attach the kunai to hit.

“Ah!?” she groaned.

His air pressure kunai sprang open and shattered Oume’s petrified sleeve from within. He did not give her time to create an additional blade. She was leaning back with her large chest jiggling, so before she could straighten back up and recover, he flipped his right kunai around and slammed the butt of the grip against her temple.

There was no obvious scream.

The traveling shrine maiden collapsed to the snow with her limbs irregular convulsing. She did not appear conscious, but it would be best to tie her up.

That was Yukizasa and Oume.

Two of the central Stonewalls had been taken out, but this was not over yet.

The snow smokescreen was a temporary thing. The armed Stonewall subordinates were still surrounding him on cross-country skis and snowmobiles.

He had to take his next action before that white cover vanished.

(Now, then.)

“Ouka, Hoozuki. I’ve cleaned things up here. Two defeated, no damage. If you’ve found anything, take it back with you. I’ll keep the guards as busy as I can to create more of an opening, so as long as you’re careful which direction you escape in-”

“Pant, pant.”

“Hoozuki?”

“I’m sorry, Sensei.”

“I need an actual report, Hoozuki. What happened!?”

He had to consciously suppress the unease rapidly filling him.

However.

“Oh? You should really be praising her for getting away at all, insolent fool.”

That was not Hoozuki’s voice.

And it came on a different channel. The transmission was not from her radio.

This was from the small radio Ouka had been using.

(Is there anything I can do right now!?)

This turn for the worse meant he could not allow things to get even worse or to fall any further behind. At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain. He could not even drag Yukizasa or Oume into an alley. He instead dumped snow over them to hide them from view and then hid himself in the trap-filled alley. That was easier said than done since it required slipping past the 20-30 people surrounding him. If they noticed anything off at all, they would immediately fire on him, but his heartrate remained calm.

“Is that Princess Karin?”

The wind blew through.

The white snow was swept from the air, bringing danger back to the road.

Sugiyado observed things from the back alley while listening to the villain over the radio.

“It was Amamo who took her out, but I am willing to accept the honor myself as the Stonewall leader.”

“…”

One of his beloved students had fallen into enemy hands.

He could not change what had already happened, but he checked over what options he had available to him and considered how to best use those options. He had no time. Burning anger welled up from the pit of his stomach, but his thoughts also raced with tremendous speed.

“I have Yukizasa and Oume.”

“You have two replaceable pawns.”

“Yeah, I’d say the same thing in your position. You could comb this area and never find your precious companions. They’ve been taken from you, so you have no choice but to change your focus and say that. If you admit how much those captured girls mean to you, who knows what kind of brutal torture you’d find in the video footage sent to you. So you can never reveal how you really feel. Especially when it comes to hostages.”

“Insolent fool.”

“Only a special few can be trusted to truly watch your back, right? I understand that all too well. We’re in the same situation here, but the numbers are different. I have two. I can play the ‘kill one’ card and still have one left over, so torture and execution are both on the table for me.”

He could not physically reach her, but he still had to take the initiative.

He would use threats, persuasion, conflict, compromise, confusion, sudden outbursts, and anything else that might help. He would use every lie and truth he could to bind Princess Karin who was out of his reach. Because allowing her to move a single fingertip just one millimeter would permanently scar Ouka.

They could call him a demon if they liked.

The time had come to let his soul burn.

“…”

His surroundings were growing noisy.

Snow ninjas on skis and snowmobiles were rushing around.

From their perspective, Sugiyado, Oume, and Yukizasa had entirely disappeared from their encirclement, so of course they were as frenzied as a hornet’s nest.

But this created an opportunity for the boy who had buried the two kunoichis in the snow on the street. He would wait where he was until he had a chance to dig them up. Ideally, he would get that done before they released the dogs.

He whispered into his radio without revealing any of that.

“Let’s hold a hostage exchange.”

“Why would I want to do that? I need to know who you people are, so my first job is to squeeze as much information out of this kunoichi as I can get.”

“If you aren’t going to take this seriously, then I will play my most effective card right away. Let’s see if you change your tune after you find one of these girls dead on the side of the road. Would you prefer it be Yukizasa or Oume?”

“Do not forget that this girl is still effective as a hostage even if I cannot kill her. She might be a kunoichi, but she has her limits. I have been trained as a Stonewall, so I am aware what line I must cross to have her beg for death instead.”

Sugiyado clenched his teeth hard enough to make a noise, but he knew he could not let her know.

“Don’t destroy that radio,” he said. “I’ll contact you with further instructions later.”

“And you treat your two guests with care. Those cards you hold are quite literally your last hope.”

She ended the transmission first.

It was a small thing, but he clicked his tongue while hiding in the alley. He had successfully restricted her actions, but she had left the greater impression in the very end. The way she talked hinted at the merciless violence that women could exact on each other. He wondered if he should have similarly hinted at some of the scummy things that men could do to women.

At any rate…

“Bara, come to me. I hate leaving the heavy lifting to you, but I need you to dig up the two hostages and carry them. There are no soldiers around anymore, but get it done before their dogs can sniff us out. I’ll take the lead and clear the way.”

“Understood.”

“Hoozuki, you support her once you catch up. Don’t bother attacking. Collect my dropped kunais and Bara’s Tatami Needles at the locations we provide you.”

“Sensei, I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”

She had no reason to apologize like this.

She and Ouka were both Elite Ninjas of the Shogunate, so if they had worked together and still been defeated, it was not because they had done anything wrong. And unlike Bara, who used her coilguns to give her a way to fight outside of disguises and chemicals, Ouka specialized in direct combat. Amamo the terrain effect specialist was just absurdly powerful. As the commander of this mission, Sugiyado could only conclude he had erred in their distribution of forces.

This was his responsibility, so he would make it right.

(I just have to deal with one thing at a time.)

Step one was leaving the Teine Workshop District now that they were done here.

Based on what Princess Karin had said, only Ouka had fallen into her hands, but he still wanted to regroup with Asagao and confirm she was all right.

Then he could have Hoozuki share whatever she had discovered about the new energy source in the lab.

And…

(I need to influence Princess Karin using Yukizasa and Oume so I can get Ouka back unharmed.)

He could guess that Princess Karin was thinking the exact same thing. They essentially had a blade pressed against each other’s throat. In a way, they would understand each other even better than some friends.

He covered his mouth with his scarf and silently gathered his resolve.

(I will get her back unharmed. No matter what it takes.)

Eventually, a single ski soldier returned after searching the surrounding area and peered into the gap between the two buildings.

But he did not notice anything amiss.

Because there were no longer any footprints remaining.

### 016. Chapter 3

### 1: The Difference Between Revenge and a Rescue Operation is Paper Thin

By the time they were safe once more, the sun had fully set.

Night had fallen.

They were inside a short-term apartment in New Sapporo Domain. It was one of the hideouts prepared by Sugiyado’s four students: Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, and Asagao.

A banner saying “Congrats on Getting Your Job Back!” was hanging unnaturally in the room.

Opening the refrigerator revealed a homemade-looking cake with plastic wrap over it.

Ouka must have prepared all of it.

The only thing missing was Ouka herself.

“…”

“…Sensei.”

Asagao softly called out to him while he sat there staring at the cake. As expected, she had not fallen into enemy hands and had merely been jammed.

His students had been calling their work here a secret date, but no longer.

(I can’t let it get to me right now.)

He had dragged the girls into his business and made a poor command decision. He really should have been committing seppuku, but that would not bring Ouka back.

So he would use his life in a different way.

He was willing to use up his life if it would save his student.

“Hoozuki. Tell me what happened.”

The silver-haired ponytail girl’s shoulders jumped.

Like he was digging into an open wound.

He wanted to punch himself in the face, but he had to ask this right now.

“What did you and Ouka see in that lab protected by such thick armor? What does Princess Karin hope will be her new energy source? And tell me about Amamo too. Tell me everything you know.”

“It was thermoelectric generation.” She spoke slowly, like she was fighting something within herself to get the words out. “They aren’t using large nuclear reactors or turbines. They’re using the electricity created in semiconductors. In a closed circuit created by pressing two different kinds of metal together, the heat difference creates electricity. In this northern land, that temperature is easy to come by when using the outside and inside air temperatures or room temperatures.”

Asagao, their gadget expert, frowned.

“But wait. By thermoelectric generation, you mean using the Seebeck effect, right? No one has ever created a macro-level generator for that. It’s true it doesn’t need gasoline or natural gas, but I thought it only produced small amounts of electricity. I mean, it can only create electricity on the circuit board.”

“Which means they only have to increase the scale.” Hoozuki hung her head. “And if they use something that already exists, they can skip the major construction fees that would rouse suspicions.”

Asagao was still not convinced.

“What are you-?”

Just as the youngest kunoichi was going to ask more, she came to a stop. She may have thought of something.

“The abandoned underground linear motor train network,” said Sugiyado with a grim look. “They were lying when they said they had filled it in with concrete.”

Linear motor trains used massive amounts of electricity, but the rails themselves were exceedingly long electric circuits lined with electromagnets. Only slight modifications would be needed to reuse them as the closed circuit for thermoelectric generation. The temperature difference would not be hard to set up if they used the difference between the closed tunnel and the outside air.

A motor and a generator were two sides of the same coin.

Even an elementary schooler would understand that after seeing a cheap light that connected to their bike’s front wheel, but running across the idea again here showed the possibility had completely slipped their minds.

Hoozuki nodded like a scolded child.

“That massive rail system connects all six of the Hokkaido Area’s domains. It covers more than 3600km…no, twice that with the up and down tracks. And the linear network hadn’t been privatized like the general railways have, so Princess Karin would have had no trouble requisitioning it with her temporary Domain Lord powers. Each individual unit is small, but when the entire system is used as a closed circuit generator, its output should easily surpass 10 nuclear reactors.”

Electric eels could produce enough electricity to kill a human in the water, but each of their individual generator organs did not produce that much. They gained that great output by connecting so many of them together in series.

One of the ninjas here could be particular about electricity and power sources since she used coilguns.

Bara lifted her large chest with her crossed arms and leaned back against the wall.

“That explains why they only needed that one lab made of snow in the middle of the workshop district. The individual units must be even simpler than a cheap calculator powered by a solar panel. New Sapporo Domain and the other northern domains must have hoped to overcome their lack of resources like this. They never would have been in this situation if they could have pumped tons of materials into building up a massive facility from scratch. They ended up modifying something they already had to make up for that.”

Anyway.

They doubted there were any problems with the new power system using the underground linear motor train network. They had to assume that Princess Karin had already restored her defense system that included everything from early-warning radars across the entire Hokkaido Area to strategic anti-air laser beam cannons and 900mm railguns. She had only been working so hard to hide it because she did not want anyone to know she had breathed life back into them.

Sugiyado sighed.

“That means she isn’t just holding them in reserve.”

“If she could take the initiative without actually using them, she would probably show them off. You know, to say ‘don’t mess with me cause I’ve got these cool new weapons’.”

He agreed with Asagao.

“Whatever she is actually planning,” said Bara. “If we assume she was hiding this information as they approached readiness, we have to assume the generation facility using the underground linear motor train network is just about complete. And if she does have her defense system back up, what is she trying to accomplish by hiding that fact? Hoozuki?”

The silver-haired ponytail girl weakly shook her head at that one. She had only seen the technology at the lab. There must not have been any documents explaining how or why it would be used.

With her arms still crossed and her back still against the wall, Bara used her chin to gesture over toward the bathroom door.

“How about we get this out of Taganuma Yukizasa and Horisato Oume, Sensei? By any means necessary.”

“Stop. I’m not leaving them in your care if you’re going to be emotional about it, Bara.”

Sugiyado made his point very clearly. They of course could not let the hostages know about that, but those two were crucial bargaining chips if they were to rescue Ouka. Carelessly harming those two and “using them up” would be the height of folly.

(I was hoping this conversation would give me some other bargaining chip to work with, but no such luck. Those generator units cover 3600km in both directions, so destroying them all is unrealistic. And I still can’t get a good grip on the conspiracy behind it all.)

He also had to make a decision about the hostage exchange to retrieve Ouka. The more time he gave Princess Karin, the more she would recover from her shock and the longer young Ouka would remain in enemy hands.

Humans did not always act in their own best interests.

Even if someone believed they were acting logically, their emotions could take control at any moment.

Taking a hostage was much easier said than done.

It affected the hostage and the hostage taker both.

After all, you had to invite an enemy into your territory, even if they were being threatened with a weapon and bound with rope or chains. Think of it like trying to get a good night’s sleep with a serial arsonist or serial killer tied up on the floor of your room. Even if your rational side could calculate out that they could not escape, could your emotional side really rest easy? The stress would be constantly building. And when you had the upper hand, it could be hard to even notice it.

“…”

With that in mind, Sugiyado made a decision. He still wanted some other bargaining chip. If Princess Karin was formulating her plans while entirely focused on Yukizasa and Oume, he could rattle her all the easier if he attacked from a different angle.

So…

“Time to contact the Empire.”

“Running to your Cyrillic mistress again?” grumbled Asagao, so he patted her small head.

“I’m not interested in Ekaterina here. I want to contact Murakami Michihiko who we left in her care.”

“Oh.”

“That’s right, Hoozuki. Princess Karin tried to directly cajole and persuade him in the castle, so he must be important to her – maybe for a rational reason and maybe for an emotional one. That means he’ll be even more useful than Yukizasa or Oume.”

### 2: Destruction

The disconcerting straining noise sounded just like a large bundle of hair being twisted and pulled taut.

It came from synthetic construction rope colored yellow and black.

“Kh,” groaned Kuhou Ouka, the girl with her long chestnut hair in twintails, as she awoke.

The solid thunk behind her came from the collapse of the tripod that had been supporting her hips from behind. Her arms were pulled over her head, her wrists were tied together, and they were dangling from the ceiling. If she was being suspended off the floor, her wrists would have been congested too badly to move or her shoulders would have dislocated, but she was kept just low enough that she could rest on her toes if she stretched down. Keeping her in that in between state was meant to slowly wear down all her body’s muscles over the course of hours.

(Can I slip the rope? No.)

There were a few stage magic tricks to that end, but they generally required some setup before being tied up. She was helpless since she had been bound by an expert while she was unconscious.

Also, a shiver ran down her skinny back.

She did not have any sort of equipment. Her stacked-barrel hunting gun called Midnight Tempest and the rest of her ninja tools had been confiscated, but she also felt no response from the strength boost her ninja outfit was supposed to provide using its electric potential elasticity and high-polymer water-absorbing gel. That was equipped with several batteries smaller than a stick of gum, but they must have all been removed.

She had not been stripped bare while unconscious, but not as a kindness to her.

That was a defensive measure to prevent the Stonewalls from feeling unnecessary guilt while she was imprisoned here.

When one side had an advantage over the other, the psychological effects were not a one-way deal. Sometimes, the imprisoners would be influenced by a pressure of their own creation. Ouka had her direct strength, but kunoichis were also taught to make a weapon of their weaknesses like that. Of course the enemy was being cautious.

She could not escape right away, so she had to alter her focus.

“…”

Unable to protect herself, she observed her surroundings while standing on her toes.

(Where am I? The enemy base? If I can find any intel I can get back to Sensei and the others, then my capture won’t be entirely meaningless.)

She was in a small square room measuring 10m on each side. The walls, floor, and ceiling were made of thick steel and, when she twisted her hips to look behind her, she saw a large door of the same material. Ducts and pipes ran along the ceiling. She was dangling down from one of those pipes and she could sense a faint vibration through the rope when she focused her senses.

(Is it a steampipe?)

The room had no windows and the fluorescent lights on the ceiling had been removed. The only light came from the large lamp in one corner. Instead of a desk lamp, this was a floor lamp standing taller than she was. Ones like that would normally be used in studios and nighttime construction sites.

(This reminds me of a current or former construction site.)

She could only guess without seeing things outside. It was even possible this was a photography studio in a skyscraper decorated to look like a construction site.

That said, it was unusual to hear absolutely nothing through the walls when she remained entirely silent. Absolute soundproofing was hard to set up and not many people could do it. That had to be a clue to where this was.

Just then, the metal door behind her opened without so much as a knock.

“Hello, miss. How are you feeling?”

She twisted around to look back at the door and focused on the view through the door before on the person who had stepped in.

However…

“There’s another door behind this one. We’re not letting you see outside this room.”

“…”

The woman of around 20 who circled in front of Ouka had long black hair swaying at her sides and dragged a gorgeous junihitoe behind her.

She was Princess Karin.

Her skin was flushed a faint pink and her black hair was glossy and shiny even while dry. A faint herbal aroma hung over her.

(Was she bathing or receiving beauty care? I guess it isn’t unusual these days to use the heat of a garbage incinerator for a spa.)

She made some guesses, but she had no way of getting any of this to Sugiyado and the others. It was frustrating.

Meanwhile, the situation was underway.

Princess Karin leaned in close to peer into the eyes of the kunoichi standing on her toes with her bound hands dangling from a rope. She was looking up from right in front of Ouka’s growing chest. That was intentional. She was trying apply pressure through the violation of personal space, just like how oppressive it felt on a packed train.

“We checked over your equipment.”

“Oh? Way to ruin the wonderful hospitality you were offering me here.”

“Act tough if you like, but we checked over all of it. Including in here.”

Princess Karin’s slender finger ran down Ouka from her flat chest and past her navel, rubbing her skin through the ninja outfit that no longer functioned but still gave off sex appeal.

“You must be a real worrier to install seven batteries in this thing.”

“Kh.”

“You hid them well, so it took a lot of ‘feeling around’ to find them all.”

That was how it must have happened.

Ouka had known that, but trained as she was, it still took a lot of effort for her to keep her teenage side from showing through.

“Now, was that search done by a woman, or by a man? Who do you think I gave the order to?”

“…”

Ouka’s expression remained unchanged.

A raging storm of embarrassed heat roiled in the core of her body, but letting that show would only invite more attacks in the same vein. The standard anti-torture strategy began with feigning indifference no matter what they did.

Princess Karin was trained in the Stonewall ninja school, so she would be familiar with the womanly techniques. She made a purr in her throat, covered her mouth with her large sleeve, and laughed in an overly elegant fashion.

“Do not worry. There are vanishingly few men who are worth inviting into a group of kunoichis who hone their sex appeal as a weapon. Most men are no more than imbeciles who end up forgetting their mission and running wild while inventing some strange story about it being ‘elopement’ or ‘challenging the world for their love’. I was so close to finally securing a useful one back at the castle when you had to intervene. The scan for hidden weapons, transmitters, and suicide pills was done by Amamo.”

It was said even the lawless pirates had avoided putting a mixed-gender crew on a single ship when possible. When working with multiple ships, they would always divide their personnel along gender lines. Needless to say, that was to avoid having the entire crew break apart from unnecessary trouble. Ouka’s group had been blessed with an extreme exception in Sugiyado Souha, but the young man named Murakami Michihiko may have been that for Princess Karin and the Stonewalls.

“But anyway.” Princess Karin looked up at the suspended girl and breathed an exasperated sigh. She was close enough for the air pressure to tickle Ouka’s flat chest. “I did not expect your tools and outfit to be so official. What are Elite Ninjas from the Shogunate doing this far north?”

“I think you know exactly why, Princess Karin.”

“Well, you can’t kill yourself like this. Despite what fiction would have you believe, humans do not die just from biting their own tongue. Are you trying to anger me into carelessly killing you?”

Princess Karin knew how the game was played. She reached into her junihitoe’s sleeve and pulled out a hairspray-sized can. Then she attached a clear plastic cup to it.

“What are you having me inhale?”

“You should really ask me to let you inhale it. While saying please, of course.”

It could simply be a gas, but it could also be bacteria or mold spores. Ouka tried to feign calm, but her eyes still wavered.

Princess Karin looked amused as she shook the metal can equipped with inhaler cup and she lightly slapped it against Ouka’s soft cheek.

“Don’t worry. It’s only oxygen. And the idea isn’t to have you inhale so much you hyperventilate.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“If I’m going to negotiate with a guy who can bring multiple Shogunate Elite Ninjas together, I need some tricks up my sleeve. I want to get Oume and Yukizasa back, but that will be no easy task. I just know he’s working up some kind of plan, so I want to lay a trap of my own. …A trap using your body and mind.” That demon in female form smiled like this was none of her concern. “Simply put, I will remake you into a puppet who can never say no. I’m sure you have done your research into New Sapporo Domain and the Stonewalls, so you might even know our identities and abilities. I doubt we could win back Yukizasa and Oume entirely unharmed now that they have been captured, but what if I had a new fighter they knew nothing about? That is exactly what I will have once you betray your companions. Those Shogunate ninjas will be satisfied once they get all of Yukizasa and Oume’s insider information, but this will catch them off guard.”

That was a horrifying thought.

She was being asked to personally kill her beloved teacher. Her body and mind would be remade until that was a real possibility. As if unseen components of her being would be removed one by one and replaced with something else entirely. She would prefer to be tortured to death in the cruelest way imaginable.

This demon understood that, but she said all this anyway.

She stood a step removed from standard morals and etiquette. She knew this was a line that must not be crossed even by a kunoichi who actively made use of taboos, but she whispered sweetly all the same.

“Yes, I can pretend to lose the negotiation and send you to him. Then, when you strike, I can use the resulting chaos to take back my companions. Now, I’ve revealed my plan to you, but you have no way of letting him know. It’s killing you inside, isn’t it!? Anyway, I would appreciate your cooperation in this. When I am done remaking you, I hope you will kill as many of your companions as possible.”

“I’ll never do that!!”

“Yes, you will. Your own intentions are irrelevant here. After all…”

Princess Karin stretched up and touched the steampipe Ouka was suspended from. Specifically, she grabbed the emergency release valve. With a loud “pshhhh!!”, something formless erupted out. It did not directly hit Ouka, but it instantly filled the sealed room. The stench of rotten eggs reached Ouka’s nose, reminding her of a hot spring.

“Hydrogen sulfide!?”

“Maybe it is and maybe that distinctive smell is being used to hide something else. Use all of your knowledge to fuel your paranoia. Now, miss, if you would like this oxygen tank, you need only ask. If you’re lucky, it won’t be too late by the time the mask is in place, but I would recommend making up your mind sooner rather than later.”

Princess Karin grinned and placed the clear cup over her own mouth and nose.

“I will be back to ask again in half an hour. I’m not interested in sitting around testing your patience.”

“…!”

“And this will continue for hours if need be. Or days. It is all up to you, so this could be the first of many half hours to come. Personally, I think I will go enjoy the rest of my massage in a room with an air purifier. Listen, I will only ask you once each visit. Enjoy feeling the toxins entering your bloodstream through your lungs.”

The first half hour was a battle with her own struggling.

She held her breath and strained her bound hands, but nothing she did improved her situation. Not breathing had never been an option. With no power left, her ninja outfit would not protect her. She felt like the unseen source of the stench was entering her through her nose, her hair, her skin, and even within her underwear.

Was this really the sulfuric chemical found at hot springs?

Could it also contain an even more brutal delirium gas or knockout gas?

Once her body could no longer resist, her mind raced and gathered up every bit of knowledge she had. It was like having her life flash before her eyes. This was her instincts trying to find any clue to breaking free of this, but her ninja training had left her with an extensive knowledge of toxins and drugs, which only made this worse. She could not have feared the possibility of certain gases and bacteria if she did not know they existed.

“How are you doing? Changed your mind yet?”

After precisely half an hour, Princess Karin reentered the room with a transparent cup over her nose and mouth.

She must have been worried that the smell would get on her junihitoe or her hair because she grimaced and closed the steampipe’s valve even though she could not have actually smelled it.

“You are a sight to behold, let me tell you. Is all that sweat just from tension? I’m sure that flesh-colored skintight suit would have maintained an interior environment between it and your skin if it still had its batteries, but you look like you just ran a marathon. Sweat is seeping from the cracks in the suit and…I kindly left your underwear intact, but it might as well not be there anymore.”

She took a deep and performative breath of fresh oxygen and the sound of gas leaving the metal cannister wore on Ouka’s nerves.

“Just say the word and you will be immediately freed from this physical exhaustion and mental fear.”

“I will never do that.”

“Another half hour it is.”

The next half hour was a battle with flashbacks.

As all the “what ifs”, maybes, and hypotheticals swirled through her mind over and over, her knowledge ended up running in an unusual direction. It may have been similar to getting lost reading manga or a magazine found while rearranging your room. Or maybe her instincts concluded there was no point in continuing the vain search through the direct genres of toxins and drugs, so they ended up reaching for a different genre of technique and memories.

Her senses dulled.

Was that because her mind was focused inwards, or simply because of the colorless gas(?) causing the stench?

She heard a whispering deep in her ears.

It was not coming from outside.

She could not pin it down to any specific direction.

The more she focused, the less she could make it out, but it refused to leave no matter how much she tried to make it go away. The indistinct voice was a lot like a mosquito buzzing around near your ear on a sweltering summer night.

She had been looking at this wrong from the beginning.

Her resistance was fairly irrelevant. Princess Karin had not set a time limit; she had simply said it would continue until Ouka broke and became her puppet. If she could not escape on her own, then she only had two options.

The options were not obey or disobey.

They were to be successfully remade or broken beyond repair.

This may have been similar to a surgical procedure.

“How are you doing?”

After a while, Princess Karin returned.

Ouka could no longer tell if it really was half an hour later or if hours and hours had passed.

“Still supporting yourself on your toes? A normal person’s legs or back would have cramped up by now, so well done there.”

“Shut…up. I…”

“Acting tough is pointless when I can see how swollen your eyelids are. Your body is reaching its limit. That just leaves your mind. Which way are the scales tipping? Will it be next time? Or maybe the time after that? Not that this will end even if it’s the time after the time after the time after the time after that. Whenever it happens, I look forward to hearing you say the word.”

“…”

“Death is the end of all possibilities. No matter how far you fall, you still have a chance of being reunited with those familiar faces as long as you remain alive. That is the logical thinking befitting a kunoichi. Okay, see you again in half an hour.”

During the next half hour, her life ceased flashing before her eyes.

Her breaths caught.

Something was wrong with her throat, so she was wheezing. Princess Karin mad mentioned her eyelids swelling, so maybe her throat was too. Her trachea could be swelling closed. She could no longer support herself on her toes, so a lot more force was placed on her wrists. If that continued long enough, her hands could be permanently damaged, but she doubted she could bring strength back to her legs as they weakly convulsed below her.

The voice was back.

The directionless voice continued to whisper to her like a bug buzzing around by her ear.

(If necrosis sets in…)

This was the only thought on her mind as she trembled with her tongue hanging limply from between her lips.

This was likely the last coherent thought remaining inside her.

(I could…die here.)

“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that.” Princess Karin returned and briefly shut off the valve. “But you should have started to notice it by now. To be honest, the gas doesn’t really matter. It’s the steampipe. The faint vibrations pass through the rope and rattle all the bones in your body. Have you been hearing a voice? Did you think you were hallucinating? The necessary instructions have already been inserted into your mind. How long until they take effect differs from person to person, but all that remains is to wait until then.”

“…”

Was this a variation of the technique named Out of the Blue?

A kunoichi made a weapon out of her own feminine beauty and allure, so she could not rely only on pure muscular strength to defeat her enemies. A kunoichi was meant to have a slim and delicate body that made an enemy careless, so they were often forced to fight at a disadvantage. They had done considerable research into how to cause the maximum amount of pain with the minimum amount of force.

When an enemy was prepared for the blow, they could grit their teeth and charge onward even as their skin and flesh were torn by a blade, but if the attack came from an unexpected direction with unexpected timing, then even the prick of a single needle could cause a large man to jump and lose consciousness.

Think of it like a test of courage where someone shoved konjac in your face on the end of a fishing rod. You would only laugh if that happened right in front of you in broad daylight, but your heart would leap out of your mouth if it caught you by surprise in the dark.

“I will remind you that when this ends is up to you. This would already be over if you would pass out and raise the white flag, but your stubbornly strong mind is only making you suffer longer. But I will wait. Wait until the light fades from your eyes.”

She could resist.

Or she could not.

…The result would be the same.

Ouka felt a miniscule but unmistakable crack form in the center of her heart.

Why was she forcing herself to continue suffering suspended from that pipe? What was the point of this? If she could prevent even one tiny part of Princess Karin’s plan, there would be a reason to let years be taken off her life here. But this was wasted effort. Nothing would come of it. The longer she resisted, the closer she would come to being the mindless puppet Princess Karin wanted.

It hit her.

What did it matter if she said the word?

What would her struggles accomplish?

“ You set up your shield in the wrong direction. If you had focused on the vocal data reaching you from the steampipe via bone conduction, it never would have set in so easily.”

Oh, no, thought Ouka.

Yet she could not rid herself of the doubt that continued to grow within her. In fact, the doubt began to weigh heavy on her soul.

If her struggles were meaningless, why not just give in? She could leave the rest in Sugiyado Souha’s hands and let him save her.

She knew that was only wishful thinking. If they failed to notice she had been remade, then she might attack and kill her teacher in his sleep.

But what other choice did she have? A pounding headache grew while all of her thoughts, ideas, and inspiration focused in on that one point.

(Bad idea…planted in my head.)

Her mind grew hazy.

She could no longer make sense of the words there.

Darkness closed in on her vision and her ears heard only Princess Karin’s sweet whispers.

“The choice is yours: will you resist and suffer, or will you give up and be freed from it all. The voice finished its job during the first hour and it is too late to struggle after reaching a lethal dose.”

(Sens-…)

Another half hour passed.

And.

There was no half hour after that.

### 3: The Nymph and the Ninja

“Oh? You look much more determined now, Comrade Souha. Welcome back to the battlefield.”

The Neva River Nymphs were a spy agency for the Cyrillic Empire.

Ekaterina had invited Sugiyado to a parking garage just like so many others in New Sapporo Domain. However, every last vehicle on the third floor were being used by the Empire under false names and they had troops at every exit to ensure their safety.

But the Nymphs were frogmen, so all of their exists were aquatic in nature, like a manhole or a water storage tank.

Sugiyado did not do things their way, but the parking garage still allowed escape in any direction, making it the perfect “hidden village” for those who lived in the darkness. Needless to say, it was not a permanent hideout. The temporary village had been created by gathering mobile homes in the half hour or so since he had contacted them.

The Nymphs’ home ground was always under the water.

“Ugh, they speak an entirely different language here. Everything’s covered in Cyrillic.”

“Asagao,” he chided.

Bara and Hoozuki were not here. They were keeping an eye on Yukizasa and Oume back in the short-term apartment. Splitting up their forces had been necessary, but it still wore on his nerves so soon after Ouka was taken. He knew he was being overprotective, but he still hated being unable to stick together.

“You need our help, do you?” Ekaterina was leaning against the side of a large truck container. “I can mobilize the sub we have out at sea if necessary.”

“I have some good news for you. Both of the strategic anti-air laser beam cannons on the outskirts of the city are back up and running. Some rusty ballistic missiles aren’t going to cut it. Nor would an orbital bombing system that circles the planet waiting for the command to strike, or the latest ballistic systems that break away at ultra-high altitude to attack their target at Mach 5 or greater.”

Ekaterina choked in shock, but he did not care about that right now.

“How is Murakami Michihiko doing?”

“Cough, ugh…h-he is in here.”

She circled behind the container she had been leaning against. She unlocked and opened the double doors to reveal a living space more comfortable than a studio apartment. If you ignored the lack of an internet connection and the fact that the doors could not be opened from within.

What made for a comfortable shut-in life when chosen for yourself turned into hellish solitary confinement when forced upon you. The difference between happiness and unhappiness was often paper thin like that.

A young man sat on the sofa inside wearing the same things he had when they handed him over. He glared at Sugiyado and clearly wanted to give him a piece of his mind, but Sugiyado did not have the time or patience to deal with the young man’s grudge right now. He got straight to the point to hold the initiative.

“Your lifeline was the thermoelectric generation using a giant closed circuit made from the underground linear motor train network.”

“!”

Michihiko’s shoulders jumped.

Whether he agreed with Princess Karin’s plan or not, that was not what he had wanted to hear while in the Cyrillic Empire’s territory. But Sugiyado did not care.

He climbed into the container.

“Help us stop Princess Karin.”

“That is an urgent matter.” The young man weakly shook his head. Horizontally. “But I’m not getting the Empire’s help. That would be like blowing up a dam to put out a fire.”

“Then you can wait here until it’s all over. Just sit here in your air conditioned room on your comfy couch and wait for the result to be read off to you in the flat voice of a news anchor. It won’t be long before you learn after the fact what happened to New Sapporo Domain and the people who murdered your grandfather while he worried for you.”

“…”

“Don’t forget: my debt is to him, not you. Your personal connection with Princess Karin doesn’t really matter. To me, you’re no more than a single component. If that component isn’t working, I can look elsewhere. So quit whining and give me an answer. Will you or will you not help us stop Princess Karin and the Stonewalls?”

First, there was a tongue click.

The young man knew he had no real choice here, which may have shown he still had his pride as a ninja. Even though flopping down in the sofa and going to sleep would have given him a safe route out of here.

From here on, he would be seen as a ninja. Sugiyado Souha had to update his opinion of the young man.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Murakami Michihiko.

“We’ve captured two of the Stonewalls’ core members and have them in our room: Taganuma Yukizasa and Horisato Oume.”

That was enough for Michihiko to freeze. He must have trusted in their skill even as their enemy.

“But I can’t say it was easy. One of ours, Ouka, was taken. We’ve arranged a hostage exchange. We will face Princess Karin directly while you lie in wait and attack from the side. That will be most effective strike.”

“…”

“Whether she lives or dies is up to the strength of that strike. I have no reason to hold back. In fact, I’d prefer to kill her a hundred times over or more since she captured Ouka. 'Which is why I’m leaving the finishing blow to you. You decide how hard you need to hit her.”

Murakami Michihiko had come here as an inspector from Edo, but Sugiyado could guess he had a closer relationship with Princess Karin. When carrying out such a largescale plan, she had attempted to bring him onto her side instead of silencing him. That suggested they had something of an alliance.

Now they would use that against her.

Even if she had killed his grandfather, this was like rubbing salt in the wound according to ordinary bushido. But ninjas lived in a different world from the samurai. Sugiyado was afraid he might carelessly shred her to pieces, so he was giving the young man a chance to show more restraint than that.

And Michihiko was not dumb enough to overlook what this meant.

He had already rejected learning what happened after the fact on TV. He had wanted to play a role in how it ended, so now he lowered his head.

“You have my thanks.”

“Let’s get down to the specifics. Asagao, the map.”

“Here you go.”

Asagao pulled out her phone and an accessory instead of a paper map. A satellite map was displayed on the wall by a simple projector that used a special wavelength of light that showed up even with the lights on.

Sugiyado pointed his chin toward the map on the wall.

“New Sapporo Domain as a whole is Princess Karin’s backyard. I doubt even Ekaterina’s intel collected from the water could fill that gap. So I want your help since you protected the city using the same system she uses. …What are the best locations in the city for holding negotiations? Where should we start to get ahead of Princess Karin here?”

### 4: The Negotiations Begin

Finally, Sugiyado left the mobile home and Asagao followed after him with her cheeks puffed out and her baggy sleeves behind her head.

“Are you sure about this? I doubt he would fully turn on us, but they know each other. He might stop the attack at the last second after seeing Princess Karin in person. Ouka’s life is on the line here, so I don’t like including an uncertain factor like him. Wouldn’t it be better to have you stab her through the heart?”

“Going with the obvious choice won’t work here, Asagao. Princess Karin has the home-field advantage. We can’t escape the city’s ruler if do everything by the book, so we need to introduce a wild card to the mix. We can no longer enjoy this as an away game. We have to throw out the rulebook.”

“But…”

“Also, Princess Karin isn’t our objective here. Taking back Ouka is our top priority, so let’s focus on that while we let him handle the opening act.”

That was when he heard some static in his ear.

He reached a hand to his ear and Asagao began monitoring it with her phone.

“Hello, insolent fool. I wish to discuss this proposed hostage exchange.”

“The gas turbine power plant on the east side.”

“Then I will decide on the time. Tonight at 7. If you do not show then, negotiations are off. Choose your actions carefully if you wish to see Kuhou Ouka again.”

Kuhou Ouka.

Princess Karin had learned her name. He doubted Ouka would have voluntarily given that, so something was happening over there. And with that in mind, he spoke with a voice colder than ice.

“Fine by me, but would you really throw out your only card for a simple penalty like that? Need I remind you I have more than one hostage? That gives me more than one chance, unlike you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I have something much crueler prepared.”

“Do you? I look forward to finding out what. One wrong move and I will kill Yukizasa and Oume with methods you’ve never even imagined. I will use every skill I’ve built up over my career as a professional ninja to invent a method that will be spoken of for a century to come.”

“That should be fun. But with both of us hoping to reclaim someone we care for, I doubt this will play out as a straight exchange. I look forward to seeing how much of a fight you criminals put up.”

The transmission ended.

Asagao shook her head.

But not to say she had failed to trace the signal.

“It came straight from New Sapporo Castle’s classified server. I can’t tell you if she’s in the castle or relaying the signal through there, though.”

They could not easily attack the castle even if they did know she was there. Princess Karin was the ruler of the entire domain, so she could use the city’s systems to their fullest.

Sugiyado clicked his tongue.

“I’m seriously starting to think we might have to kill her.”

### 5: Yukizasa and Oume

They had agreed on 7 PM, but this was not the same as meeting your friends in front of the train station. Arriving right on time was like asking to be killed. The trick to winning and surviving was visiting the surrounding area and setting everything up before 7 PM.

Sugiyado Souha entered their makeshift jail cell with Murakami Michihiko.

“Yukizasa, Oume. We need to talk.”

The short-term apartment’s prefab bathroom was the exact opposite of a tourist destination’s hot spring. The cramped space was surrounded by artificial walls and had no windows, making it feel like a cell. Yukizasa was handcuffed to the bath’s accessibility railing and Oume to the toilet’s pipes, putting them too far apart to reach each other.

Their reactions were very different when he opened the door. Small Yukizasa showed him the raw hostility of a wild beast and sexy Oume cowered down in apparent fear.

“That’s some real basic emotional manipulation.” Murakami sounded exasperated. “Both sadism and a protective desire are based on reliance and possessiveness. If one of them isn’t to your liking, is the other one supposed to draw you in?”

“…”

An appraising silence followed.

But they had to already know that Murakami Michihiko was one of the questioners. That meant he was not on Princess Karin’s side and would not cover for those two.

(Then again, I wouldn’t put it past a ninja to pretend to cooperate with me to help the kunoichis escape.)

Those two were both pros.

No amount of soothing or coaxing from Sugiyado was going to shake them. The most effective move was not violence or kind words. The thick shield held out in front of them would not break. If you wanted them to speak, it was best to confuse them about who was on whose side, leaving them uncertain which way to hold their shield.

“We know everything,” said Sugiyado as if continuing for the young man. “Do you have a secondary and tertiary trap on top of the emotional manipulation? If not, you’ve failed. Give up now.”

That earned him a blatant tongue click.

But not from rough Yukizasa. This came from Oume who expertly used her sweet sex appeal.

She knew her techniques would not work on an instructor of kunoichis. She had probably only hoped her poor attempt would make him feel sorry for her.

Yukizasa and Oume’s top priority would be to determine what Murakami Michiko’s angle was.

But once they moved their shields in that direction, Sugiyado would stab for their exposed sides.

“What do you want?” asked Yukizasa while seated in the bathtub and not even looking his way. She had to know several ways to drag information out of trained ninjas using just the running water in here. And without leaving a single mark on their skin.

But Sugiyado only sighed.

He did not even step inside the bathroom, like he was respecting it as their territory.

Glancing over at Murakami Michihiko before talking would rattle and disconcert those kunoichis far more than any violence or threats.

“?”

Michihiko himself did not know how to respond and caused an unnatural silence, but it was still enough to affect Yukizasa and Oume since they were willing to read several layers too much into anything after being imprisoned like this.

After warming them up like that, Sugiyado got down to business.

Now that they were sufficiently rattled, he got right to the point.

“To be blunt, I don’t see much use in the two of you. We could see pretty much your entire hand from the moment we figured out your trick was using thermoelectric generation with the underground linear motor train network.”

“!”

This was working.

Sexy Oume glared over at small Yukizasa, telling her to mask her reactions better.

“That just leaves what exactly you plan to do with it, but we can figure that out by cornering Princess Karin and getting her to talk. Besides, she might not have even given you two the real reason. Better to get it from a trustworthy source than leave open the possibility of misinformation.”

Oume smiled in a self-deprecating way while bound to the toilet.

She may have decided to speak before Yukizasa could say too much.

“Then why are you even meeting with us? Hoping to distract yourself from your companion’s capture?”

“If it would get her back, I would dismember you in that tub and stuff you in bags. Should I send the bags to New Sapporo Castle? Is Princess Karin emotional enough to cover her face while watching the carnage on a monitor? I kind of doubt it.”

It all came so smoothly.

He was not trying to convince them of anything and he was not displaying any obvious anger or killer intent. He sounded so relaxed it might have passed in one ear and out the other if they were not paying attention. But that was what made it so bone-chilling.

He would do it if necessary.

As easily as he might chop a radish in two on the cutting board.

If he did not radiate that energy and make them hyperventilate, then this was entirely meaningless.

Someone’s life was riding on this.

Kuhou Ouka was a student left in his care. She had gone along with this plan even though she had nothing to gain from it. She was not here, but each of his words and each second that passed could influence whether she lived or died.

“Again, I don’t need anything from you. If I can return you, that’s one less thing I have to worry about.”

His tone remained unchanged.

Even a police officer aiming a gun at a criminal would have shown more emotion while explaining their right to remain silent.

“If I asked you to do something, you wouldn’t do it for me, would you? But keep that within reason, if you don’t mind.”

“…”

“Listen, if I can’t use you for anything, then I won’t. I have no reason to go out of my way to kill you, but I also have no reason to insist on your survival. If things go wrong at the exchange, I will kill you on the spot. The rails have been laid out, so now you either follow them or you intentionally derail. The choice is yours.”

What happened next would be the same either way. Whether they would obey or not, they would still want to know how things were supposed to go down.

“Creating the illusion of choice while guiding us toward the card you want?” Oume kept her voice low while handcuffed to the toilet pipes. “Is this supposed to be a form of mind control?”

“Interpret it however you like, but I’m not lying. You can choose to do what I say or not and that will determine what happens to you.”

“…”

Oume looked over at Murakami Michihiko with the look of a chained-up puppy, but he only sighed.

Sugiyado and Michihiko had not planned any of this out in advance, but that was why a single adlibbed comment could cause such a disturbance.

“I was tricked by the Stonewalls once already, so isn’t it a bit selfish to expect me to be honest with you now?”

“I should have ignored the princess and killed you sooner. An inspector who isn’t in our pocket only brings trouble.”

The traveling shrine maiden talked tough, but a real ninja did not make a show of their killer intent. If you were planning to kill, it was best to look like you would never hurt a fly.

The kunoichis had no ground to stand on here, so they may have hoped to draw out their own hostility this way.

To intentionally disillusion themselves.

To help give up on someone they had thought was on their side.

(How naïve. I won’t say it’s wrong to feel that way, but the more you care about something, the more carefully you have to protect it to avoid being hurt.)

“Now, then.” Sugiyado paused for a beat. “Those are some strong words, but which is it? Yes, or no. This isn’t a choice you can put off. I just hope you choose the card I think you will.”

With that said, he pulled out two stick-shaped digital voice recorders and threw them within arms’ reach of the two girls.

“Everything you need to know is on those. You can replay it as many times as you like. Whatever your intentions, you’re starved for information, right? I left out any maps or photos that require a visual, so do your best to memorize it all from the audio alone.”

### 6: Official Trap Preparations

“Deliveries 2 and 3 are complete. The next one will be the last.”

“Very good.”

Princess Karin nodded calmly at her subordinate’s report while walking through the facility with the hem of her junihitoe dragging behind her. With Taganuma Yukizasa and Horisato Oume captured, half her central team was missing and she had to visit this mass of steel and concrete herself for a direct report.

(To think an organization could be too big.)

But that did not mean she was willing to throw all that away and attempt it with a minimal number of elites.

A metallic thud sounded.

An armored truck’s electronically-controlled suspension had easily lowered a Swift Foot Type-2 Mount. Just a few years ago, the category of 2-wheel armored vehicles had not even existed, but these were essentially a dual-wheeled unit that an armored samurai replaced their lower body with.

They had of course had their origins in large motorcycles, but given their size and weight, they were more like a slimmed-down steamroller.

They were armed with a projectile weapon that resembled a Western bow-and-arrow after combining a rapid-vibration spear with an ultra-flexible bow made from the same special stainless steel used in the springs for skyscraper earthquake countermeasures. Those high-mobility anti-composite-armor weapons had been developed to open a hole in the tanks and 6-legged mobile fortresses that made up the Cyrillic Empire’s primary fighting force. Not only did they function as a weapon at close and long range, but most people would not even want to imagine what became of someone if they were run over by a “slimmed-down steamroller”.

No matter where the enemy was hiding in the gas turbine power plant, these could break right through the wall to reach them. There were plenty of sensors capable of detecting a target right through thick obstacles, such as terahertz waves and magnetic resonance.

She had just one concern.

(The power plant is crucial to the city’s infrastructure. We need to calculate out the acceptable amount of damage and share a map of what areas can be destroyed. If this comes down to a game of deception, we might not have a datalink up at all times.)

They could always reroute all the power from the underground linear motor train network to the city, but that would mean more or less be going public with their secret power source. She wanted to avoid anything so conspicuous.

“The final transport unit is here. Delivery 4 has arrived.”

“Good.”

They were not up against paper targets here.

She had this much at her disposal, but the Shogunate ninja would be working to outwit her in order to survive…and to save the hostage. But what might look like a clever choice could also be narrowing your options through unnecessary assumptions. It was just like a game of shogi. She had her standard heavy firepower, but she also had the secret arts of the ninja. While her opponent was hiding from the obvious threat of the rook or bishop, she would attack with the trickier knight or lance. In other words, she just had to hunt them down with her ninjas.

That meant Princess Karin herself and Amamo.

Then the junihitoe princess opened the trailer of the armored truck that had just arrived and viewed the weapon that had been hardest to procure.

She gave a command to her ultimate weapon that gave off a faint floral scent.

“How are you feeling, my cute kunoichi?”

### 7: To Battle

The gas turbine power plant was located on the east side of the city.

New Sapporo Domain was landlocked and thus could not acquire large quantities of coolant water from the ocean, so thermal power generation was a crucial part of its infrastructure. That said, the old-fashioned coal method pumped out toxic smoke, which was incompatible with preserving a livable environment in the big city. That naturally limited them to using the same city gas as ordinary homes.

That may have been enough to support the people’s lives, but it was insufficient to power the many defense weapons deployed to every corner of the vast northern land. In fact, they could not have the power generation facility openly visible by satellite. If the Cyrillic Empire launched a missile strike on or sabotaged it, all the military systems would go down.

The dull gray building stood out from the surrounding city even with a thin layer of artificial snow.

“It’s generally exactly as Murakami said.”

The sun was setting.

Asagao was using a tablet to view the footage sent by an aerial drone resembling a giant top supported by coaxial rotors.

“The many pipes even cover up the roads running through there. That probably helps prevent satellites from seeing the steam from the pressure release valves and the smoke from the smokestacks, but I can’t get the drone any closer due to all the EM scattered by the turbines. The control interference would be too great if I had it descend any more and who knows when communications will be lost too.”

“Oh? So they don’t stop the power plant even during emergencies?”

“C’mon, Bara. Don’t you know it takes days to inspect and restart the turbines once they stop? Besides, Princess Karin is trying to protect the people. Even if her methods are a little insane.”

Asagao was right. The large reactors found in power plants and ironworks were more efficient when kept running at all times instead of switching them on and off for every little thing.

Princess Karin controlled the local government, so she had use of the official surveillance network, from the security cameras to the satellites, and she could even send in a large military force. Sugiyado’s team was fighting an away game, so they needed a reliable withdrawal point more than a giant weapon. In that sense, the gas turbine power plant was like a jungle of steel and concrete. They could use their ninja techniques to their hearts’ content there.

Hoozuki checked the same screen.

“But, Sensei, she’ll know how to use the place like that too, won’t she? We should assume the security is a lot stricter from normal. They’ll have filled in all the holes and used every advantage it gives them.”

“I know that.”

He had designated the location and Princess Karin had designated the time. She would have chosen a time that gave her enough time to make the preparations she needed. No one would insist on a condition that hurt their position.

And with that in mind…

(That honestly doesn’t matter.)

Sugiyado Souha did not lament his disadvantages.

If you could not ally yourself with your disadvantages, you could never overturn the board from behind the scenes.

(Ninjas are meant to perform the sabotage that a largescale army can’t do. Being at a disadvantage makes it easier to follow our training. Princess Karin, the more you fortify your position with military might, the more thick fat you surround yourself with and the harder you will find it to move.)

When an enemy had 100 large weapons, the more flammable objects you had to trigger explosions with and the more chances to trick the enemy into hitting each other.

When an enemy had 1000 guards, the more opportunities you had to defeat one, steal their uniform, and sneak in and the easier it was to pick up on dissatisfaction within the ranks to start some infighting or find an information leak.

These would be Princess Karin’s chosen troops, but she would not have gathered them all personally. Receiving the same training and education did not mean they all shared the same values and sense of the threat. Gather enough people and holes and misunderstandings were unavoidable. Not even the production lines for cutting-edge weapons had entirely perfected the advance detection of faulty parts.

A ninja knew how to view things in that light. They were like a contrarian that could back up their arguments with real action.

“We don’t actually know where Amamo or Princess Karin are, though. Or Ouka for that matter.”

They had an hour until the promised time of 7.

“It’s time.” Sugiyado teased the scarf over his mouth. “Asagao, switch the drone to programmed flight. We need to leave.”

“Hey, Sensei. I know arriving early to lie in wait is the standard play, but we know the Stonewalls will be there before us. If we arrive too soon, won’t it lead to a skirmish before the hostage exchange?”

Hoozuki was being more timid than usual, but that may have been due to losing Ouka before her eyes. Even Sugiyado had a hard time caring for his wounded heart and fully conquering the fear in such a short time.

And his answer was simple.

“7 was the given time, but we don’t actually have to wait until then. They’ll see it the same way, so I bet this will begin sooner.”

Sugiyado had three cards in his deck: Yukizasa, Oume, and – as a dark horse – Murakami Michihiko. As fighters, he had Bara and Hoozuki. Asagao was his information support. He did not count Ekaterina or the others from the Cyrillic Empire.

Once they had everything they needed, they took different trucks to reach the gas turbine power plant from three different directions.

Hoozuki took Yukizasa.

Bara took Ouma.

And Sugiyado Souha took Murakami Michihiko.

The young man spoke with a bitter look on his face.

He mostly seemed to be speaking to himself.

“The princess must be putting the happiness of New Sapporo Domain and the entire Hokkaido Area first and foremost. I’m certain of it. It’s just that she chose too extreme a method.”

“…”

His loyalty was impressive after having his grandfather killed and being framed for the crime.

Not to mention that he was not a part of the Stonewalls themselves.

“But you can still fight back without hesitation?”

“I am a ninja. I was trained to do so and I trained all my men to do so.”

He must have been taught how to suppress his emotions so he could control himself and survive even when under too much confusion to properly process what was happening. But that was no guarantee the process was working perfectly.

Sugiyado did not teach that method.

He taught his students how to use their emotions to fuel their progress, but he would not teach them how to stifle what they felt. That would be antithetical to teaching them how to live their lives.

“What happened between you and the old man?”

“Nothing,” spat out Michihiko while looking aside. He apparently felt some guilt. “A family member turned out to be a criminal. Enough of one to be sent to max-security Abashiri. Is it that odd that we became estranged after that? And remember that I’m a Shogunate ninja. I can never be open about it, but I am a civil servant.”

“Are you sure that’s all?”

If so, why had he been unable to throw out the ninja tool the old man made?

Sugiyado hid that question in his tone.

Michihiko sighed.

“He took the blame for a government official’s crime to protect the Shogunate. No matter how much I wanted to tell the truth, I would only have been ensuring he did it all for nothing. How am I supposed to stay in touch with someone during all that? I couldn’t manage it. My personal sense of justice was shaken by it.”

That did sound like that old man.

Sugiyado thought on it while holding the steering wheel. That explained why the old man had felt so different from the other prisoners. He had gotten by so easily within the complex power balance of the special prison, so it had seemed unlikely he would have been unable to avoid trouble in the outside world and committed a crime without covering his tracks properly.

“I’m not even going to try to change how you feel about Princess Karin.”

“Wha-?”

“I said I’m not even going to try, so I don’t need any arguments from you. I have no guarantee I could do anything about it on such short notice even if I wanted to.” Sugiyado sounded exasperated. “But you were so intent on stopping her plan that you turned a blade on her in the castle. She isn’t someone we can outdo while negotiating through the proper channels. Ouka is a complete stranger to you, but you will never have a better shot at defeating Princess Karin and the Stonewalls. Screw this up and there is no stopping New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area. Keep that in mind.”

“…”

For Murakami Michihiko, he was avenging his grandfather’s death.

He would be aware of that and also aware the he still could not bring himself to abandon Princess Karin.

He was in a bind, but the clock was still ticking.

“If this fails, this will no longer be a job for ninjas. The Shogunate might send in an army. Or the Empire might. Princess Karin would be shot to death beyond your reach or she would kill herself inside her blazing castle. If you want to avoid that, then do what you deem best now.”

They did not even consider entering through the main gate.

Sugiyado parked in an empty lot a short distance away.

“Follow the plan.”

“You too. You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”

“Ninjas always have their secrets.”

“…”

“So I will tell you what I can assure you is true: I respect your grandfather and I will do whatever it takes to rescue Ouka. We’re on equal footing here. You use me toward your ends and I’ll do the same with you. Now, let’s go.”

Alone, Sugiyado hopped atop the wall surrounding the empty lot dusted with artificial snow and then jumped to the roof of a nearby building. He noted a quiet beeping and held a hand to his ear while continuing his three-dimensional movement.

“I have a reading from the sensor. Murakami Michihiko has begun to move. Let him move freely from now on.”

“Got it, Sensei. We have Yukizasa and Oume on standby.”

“Murakami was present when you interrogated those two, so keep in mind that his name will spread quickly, Sensei.”

Hoozuki was right. But Murakami Michihiko was not meant as an unseen assassin. Hints of his presence were meant to rattle Princess Karin, so perfectly hiding him would be counterproductive.

People had a tendency to see ghosts in the dark because they feared incomplete information more than anything. That was when their imagination kicked in.

“Release Oume.”

Now.

The other side would have everything set up for the confrontation here, but what would they least expect when hoping to retrieve hostages?

To find one of the supposed hostages wandering around before the negotiations began. That alone could would fill them with tension and cause their preparations to crumble.

They could no longer just ready their shields and tense their bodies. Accepting in their ally would require opening a gap in their shields.

(If we’re lucky, Oume will mention Murakami Michihiko. Just as the Stonewalls think they can escape the tension by focusing on Oume, the ground will open up below their feet. Just like someone who makes one final burst of speed to finish a marathon, only to learn they’re at the halfway point.)

“Hold onto Yukizasa,” he said while jumping from rooftop to rooftop.

“Hey, Sensei. Shouldn’t we have waited until we had confirmed Ouka’s presence here? If they don’t respond, we’ll have wasted one of our cards.”

“I know you’re worried, Hoozuki, but stay focused. It would take us all night to track down where in that labyrinthine power plant Ouka and Princess Karin are. Remember that we still have Yukizasa if this doesn’t work out.”

Needless to say, Princess Karin’s side had to be much more careful since they only had Ouka. If things did not go according to plan, they would either fortify their defenses or withdraw. Either option would stand out. Sugiyado’s side still had to be on the lookout for a bluff, but if they had a way to pinpoint locate Ouka or Princess Karin, it was worth using.

“Transmissions intercepted,” reported Asagao. “It’ll take me a while longer to break the encryption, but I can see where the most traffic is. There is a lot going from Area D2 to E5. That’s where Oume is wandering around blindfolded and handcuffed.”

“So they’re freaking out.”

The other side had to be simulating a number of scenarios. If they went to save her, would they get sniped? If they focused their forces there, would they be leaving another area too thinly guarded? What they did know was that Sugiyado’s side was not going to negotiate in the normal way and that they could not carelessly execute Ouka in retaliation since he still had Yukizasa. He had sent Oume back alive to spread hope through the other side. By not sending back a corpse, he proved that that they could get their people back alive if they played their cards right. That would make them want Yukizasa back as well. They could no longer dryly tell themselves those two were a lost cause.

As a result, they would want to keep Ouka alive no matter what.

“The Stonewalls have contacted and collected Oume. What now?”

“Leave them be. Don’t snipe anyone who approaches. They’ll panic even more because they won’t know if this was done as a sign of good will or as part of a dangerous scheme. The danger here isn’t whether or not their guess is right. If they can find an explanation they accept, they can recover from their confusion.”

“Sensei, vehicles are gathering in A2, diagonally across the grounds from E5,” reported Asagao. “That’s near the rear entrance. Now that they have Oume, their formation is collapsing. They probably want to retrieve Ouka before they take any major damage and then try this all again. They hope repeating the process will get them Yukizasa back as well.”

They were quick to react.

At this rate, they would be gone before Oume could say Murakami Michihiko was their enemy.

Now was the time to act.

This was just like the theater of a scam artist.

To keep the negotiations running smoothly, he could not let the Stonewalls regain their cool.

“Understood, Asagao. I’ll deal with it.”

“Princess Karin isn’t the only one there. Just like we have Murakami as a trump card, they have the still-unseen Amamo. Not to mention all their ordinary forces. Be careful, Sensei!”

“Didn’t I teach you times like this are the best opportunities, Asagao?”

He jumped between rooftops and ran down a catwalk-like pathway suspended in the air. He made sure to avoid casting a shadow on the ground below to avoid the troops patrolling there.

Another figure jumped over him on the next level up.

(Is that Murakami Michihiko?)

Sugiyado thought about the young man while their shadows intersected. Murakami was cooperating because he had his own plans, but they had yet to see what those plans were. Why was he still willing to support Princess Karin after she killed his blood relative? There was a missing piece to this puzzle.

(I hope that doesn’t come back to bite us, but I need to focus on Ouka right now.)

He wanted to ignite the city gas and blow every one of them to smithereens for capturing his adorable student, but that was not the ninja way. Combat and killing should be avoided when at all possible.

He traveled along various pipes and pathways to reach the area he wanted.

Area A2 was the safe exit the other side had created.

(This is my chance.)

The enemy had a large force, so if they wanted to leave while protecting their precious hostage, they would have to use several heavy bulletproof cars. And to leave the grounds, they would have to pass through a gate that acted as a bottleneck.

At present, they had 5 bulletproof cars lined up one behind the other with a two-wheeled Swift Foot at the very front and back. Even a tank or attack helicopter would get its ass kicked in a head-on shootout.

But that did not matter here.

Sugiyado silently pulled a Fierce Fang from the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt.

A moment later, he launched it down like a bolt of lightning at the two-wheeled armored vehicle in the lead as it passed through the gate. The mass of composite armor was a cross between giant armor and a large motorcycle – creating something like a slimmed-down steamroller – but it was no more than scrap metal when enough nitrogen gas to pry open a crushed car door stripped the processing unit from its back.

The defeat came so suddenly that the vehicles behind it crashed into it and each other from behind. The gate kept them from driving around, so shifting to reverse was their only option. However…

(One more.)

The mount in the rear was aiming its enormous castle-busting bow around and scanning for the enemy, but it too ceased moving after a dull rumble of destruction.

Now the armored vehicles were blocked in the front and back.

“Sh!!”

Sugiyado Souha pulled out another air pressure kunai, jumped down from a height of about three stories, and made a swift attack.

He flipped down toward the vehicles.

He felt light as a feather for the few seconds before landing and he used that time to throw several air pressure kunais toward the trapped bulletproof cars.

It was like piercing a piece of cloth with a sewing machine’s needle.

The blades stabbed into the thick hoods and the power of the nitrogen gas forced those wounds wider, sending sinister sparks flying from the engine compartments. However, the engines were not his aim – he was trying to cut the power cables from the batteries. The doors and windows were thick and bulletproof, so motors were used to help with their great weight when opening or closing them. He did not even need to defeat the lower-ranked ninjas. By cutting the power, he could trap them inside those bug cages.

After lightly landing in the snow, Hoozuki and Bara’s voices finally reached him.

“Sensei, we can’t provide covering fire if you do that!!”

“You’re being too reckless. I get wanting to rescue Ouka as soon as possible, but still.”

“What are you talking about?” he replied.

The ninja did not bat an eye after destroying seven 2-wheel armored vehicles and bulletproof cars in quick succession. He seemed to be saying he would take out twice that many if need be.

He turned back the way he had come and peeked in the windows of the vehicles as he passed by. The passengers belatedly aimed their blades and guns his way, but they could not attack him through the thick bulletproof glass even from the inside. He calmly walked by those people who could only sit idly by and watch and he found what he wanted in the third from the front.

Kuhou Ouka.

The twintails girl sat in the back seat in between two people dressed all in black. Her head was drooping weakly and her eyes seemed to radiate exhaustion, but she had no obvious exterior injuries.

Their side had just the one hostage.

Without a spare, they could not afford to let her die. Even Princess Karin must have felt a need to treat her with care.

But what did that matter?

Sugiyado had to consciously regulate his breathing to suppress the anger flaring up within him.

The Stonewall troops seated on the other side of the thick bulletproof glass looked tense but also somewhat relaxed. The bulletproof door could not be opened from either side, so if they waited around, the heavy firepower of the samurai mounts or a kunoichi like Amamo or Princess Karin would arrive. Their boss could not abandon them when they were looking after the precious hostage. Sugiyado gave them an exasperated look as he pulled a hair spray can and a lighter from his pocket.

He ignited the spray for a simple flamethrower that he first used to roast the glass from the outside. Then he opened a hole in the bottom of the can with the tip of a kunai, releasing the gas that had been stored inside as a compressed liquid at less than -30 degrees. That produced a disconcerting cracking sound.

Bulletproof glass was made to stop a bullet, but it was still glass. It could not survive rapid temperature changes. Even the clear film between the layers had been melted by the heat.

“Eek!”

A 10cm diameter hole was enough.

The Stonewall on the right was too shocked to move and the one on the left could not decide whether to aim their gun at Sugiyado or Ouka. Both were soon knocked out by the air pressure kunai that flew in from outside to hit them on the head or chest.

The nitrogen gas was not needed here.

Although he would have “pried open” their flesh and blood had they actually aimed a gun at Ouka.

“Ouka.”

He called into the car while sticking his hand in through the broken glass to unlock the door. He could not open the heavy door with his arm strength alone, so he stuck an air pressure kunai in the crack and forced it open.

“Well done enduring long enough to give us this chance, Ouka. It’ll all be okay now.”

“…”

She did not respond.

When he saw how she only sluggishly turned her head, he wrapped his arms around her. They must have done something to her while she was captured. Sealing off her emotions and locking down her mind may have been the only way to protect her psyche when she had no way to escape.

He had taught her how to do that.

The only other solution was suicide. He wanted to praise her for not going with that option.

“Let’s get out of here.” He held her head to his chest. “We’ll get you somewhere safe. We can think about crushing the Stonewalls after that.”

Sensing a stirring in the driver’s seat, he threw a kunai without even thinking. He did not even look in that direction.

He thought through his options while collecting the kunais lying within the car.

The troops trapped inside their own bulletproof cars could not move, but they would be communicating via radio. Reinforcements would be arriving soon. The 2-wheeled samurai mounts, the ordinary infantry, Amamo, and Princess Karin were all present at the gas turbine power plant, so he could not just hang around forever.

At 5kg, his back felt funny. At 10kg, it exploded with pain.

He cursed himself for being too useless to even carry his own student to safety and he spoke into the mic hidden within his scarf.

“I’ve retrieved Ouka. Hoozuki, you help me carry her out of here. Bara, you look out for enemies and provide covering fire from a distance. I repeat, I have retrieved her. You can reduce Yukizasa’s priority level. Leave her in the vehicle tied up and gagged. Just silence anyone who gets in the way of Hoozuki and Ouka’s escape. But don’t pursue them too far. Only hold them back while keeping yourself safe. I don’t want them taking another hostage.”

“Got it, Sensei.”

“Someone is already headed your way! There are too many flammable objects to get a clear line of fire!!”

He heard a loud metallic clang from overhead. Ninjas usually moved silently, so this was an intentional declaration of war.

“…”

Ouka could walk on her own with some guidance, so he wrapped an arm around her and left the bulletproof car. Propping her up was light enough. He was not actually carrying her, so his spine’s restrictions did not matter.

The noise had come from around two stories up, atop the complex arrangement of pipes.

The bright colors of a heavy junihitoe danced in the buffeting wind atop a horizontal steel cylinder thicker than a child was tall.

“Princess Karin.”

“You’re a surprisingly earnest person. But you were a little early, insolent fool.”

He detected a sweet aroma through his scarf.

Kunoichis often used poisons and using your nose was not always safe, but he saw through it right away. This was not a poison. It was the oil used in beauty care.

Silently, he let his anger build in his brow.

Princess Karin held a one-handed hammer made entirely out of metal. The blunt weapon allowed even a slender woman to smash through a helmet or bulletproof jacket, so it was more convenient even than a more threatening-looking blade. Plus, this was a ninja weapon with a hollow grip that could be used as a gun.

(Where’s Murakami Michihiko?)

The boy was not foolish enough to look around for him. The young man would likely rattle Princess Karin more than anything, but there was no sign of him rushing out right away.

Princess Karin spun the sinister and heavy ninja weapon like a baton.

“Now, how to interpret this situation? We have already retrieved Oume. I thought for sure she would be wrapped in bombs or something, but no.”

“I’m not going to say I’m done with you. I will crush you – thoroughly – even if you are doing all this for a good cause. I’m through fighting to repay a debt of gratitude. Do not underestimate the power of vengeance, little girl.”

“Oh, how scary.” She hid her mouth behind her sleeve and laughed in a way as elegant as it was sinister. “But we need Yukizasa back too, so I must insist that the negotiations continue.”

“Ouka was your only card. What else can you offer?”

“I have not miscounted. I just need her to work a little longer for me. Do it, Ouka.”

She gave an arrogant command.

The twintails girl was closer to him than anyone as he held his arm around her slender waist.

And a moment later, a dull thud rang out as the Fierce Fang in Sugiyado Souha’s hand slammed mercilessly into the center of his student’s chest.

The trap had failed.

He had defused it in an instant.

Even Princess Karin was taken aback by the speed with which he acted. Not the physical speed, the speed of his decision.

“Oh? That seemed to catch you by surprise, yet you still made up your mind so quickly?”

All emotion had vanished from the instructor’s face.

He would act when it was necessary.

Even if that meant attacking one of his precious students.

Because he knew holding back would only put both their lives at greater risk.

He had attacked over the skintight, bulletproof, and blade-resistant ninja outfit. That had stopped the tip of the blade, but the impact had still reached her, instantly knocking her unconscious. He could not support her limp weight, so he let go of her hips and let her collapse to the thin layer of artificial snow.

A trap.

A surprise attack.

His guard was too strict for that to work. He had taken the optimal action like a machine.

“Now you’ve done it.”

Yet he shed tears of blood.

Literally. Keeping the emotion from his face worked his facial muscles so hard that the corners of his eyes tore, sending red drops down his cheeks.

The ordinary ninja rules had collapsed.

He did not reject the emotions themselves.

Killer intent erupted from his entire body like a great invisible mass.

“ You made me turn a blade on one of my students again, little girl. ”

No longer would he limit himself to the optimal level of violence.

Or maybe he never had.

“Hoozuki.”

The silver ponytail girl slid up on Countless Calamities, a motorcycle kept silent by the overuse of soundproofing materials.

He did not even look her way.

“Take care of Ouka. Check her inside and out for transmitters and bugs, tie her up and gag her, and then carry her back to Asagao. …Asagao, you heard that, right? Sleep deprivation and exhaustion wouldn’t work in such a short time. Stimulation of light or sound must have been used to rapidly wear her down and steal away her free will. Prepare to break the hypnotism, restore her nutrient levels, and recover her autonomic nerves. Break all of her bonds.”

“What about you, Sensei?” asked his silver-haired student while gently lifting up Ouka.

He had let his emotions show, which was not at all like a ninja or an instructor.

Yes.

He had pulled a Fierce Fang from his shirt while he glared up at Princess Karin.

“I will destroy everything she’s built up: her castle, her fortune, her dream – everything .”

He had allowed all of this to happen, so he had to end it himself.

### 8: A Dogfight Sans Aircraft

Sugiyado Souha had taught those four girls everything there was to know about being a ninja.

But he had never neglected their emotions in the process. He had not taught them to throw out those feelings. He had not let them become unfeeling murder machines.

So.

The boy who valued emotions to that extent would of course feel something here.

“You’re dead.”

“Oh, how fun.”

He jumped from the bulletproof car he had destroyed to reach the top of a 2-wheeled samurai mount, and jumped from there to the second-story pipes where Princess Karin waited. He was not supported by the high-polymer water-absorbing gel chemical winches or electric potential elastic belt cylinders found in Bara or Hoozuki’s ninja outfits. He pulled it off with pure martial arts taken to their extreme.

Princess Karin took a step back on a thick pipe running parallel to his and swung her hammer with a side throwing motion.

The tungsten steel nail hidden in the grip burst from within.

The hammer’s weight and centrifugal force flung it with more power than a simple swing of her arm could have managed.

And she had aimed for the moment he landed, making it impossible to dodge.

“!!”

The ninja boy swung his air pressure kunai to deflect the projectile, but she chose that moment to rush in. All ten of her fingers raced along the hammer’s grip. The movement was as subtle as a stage magician’s trick, but Sugiyado did not overlook it. She had loaded the hollow grip with a powder wrapped in thin paper.

(A blinding powder made from dried jellyfish tentacle!?)

Stingers like that did not fully lose their toxicity when dehydrated, so this was one possible use for them. If she swung her hammer from a few meters away, creating a cloud of toxic stingers too small to see, he would have no way to dodge or defend against it. A powdered attack was not something he could bring down with a swing of a kunai and losing his sight even for a second would mean death at the moment.

He had only one way of preventing her move.

(Make my own move!!)

He stepped forward to reach her before she could swing her arm. She made a last-minute alteration to her hammer’s path to block the kunai aimed for the side of her head.

The two metal weapons crashed together.

“Kh.”

“…!!”

The kunai and hammer pushed against each other while they glared at each other from point black range.

A samurai would use a single sword for attack and defense, but ninjas were different. Locking weapons was not enough to stop the flow of time.

Princess Karin’s foot aimed for Sugiyado’s shin, so he pulled that leg back out of the way, releasing their locked weapons. The hammer finally swung enough to scatter the dried jellyfish stingers contained in its hollow grip

But Sugiyado was not about to sit around waiting for that.

He ruptured the thumb-sized pack of nitrogen rapid-foaming agent used by the air pressure kunai to disturb the air in front of him. The dried stingers were no threat if they could not harm the mucous membranes of his eyes, nose, and mouth.

In fact, Princess Karin now had to do something about the stingers being pushed back her way. One always had to pay careful attention to the wind direction when using a toxic cloud.

“Tch!!”

With a wave of her heavy junihitoe’s large sleeve, she whipped up enough wind to protect her face. It was well done given how little time she had to react, but she had still given Sugiyado more time to move. Instead of forcing himself to run through the toxic cloud of jellyfish stingers, he threw a Fierce Fang toward her center line from a few meters away. He pictured it like jabbing her with a spear.

Sparks flew.

She had knocked the kunai from the air with her hammer and took a few steps back to put distance between them while she swung her blunt weapon like a baton.

“Hm, not bad. I had assumed you were no more than a pimp who ordered his favorite kittens around, but it seems you can do some things yourself.”

He did not dignify that with a response.

He wasn’t interested in listening to her until he had knocked out those pretty front teeth of hers and her bloody mouth was begging for her life, so he wordlessly readied a Fierce Fang in his right hand.

Nothing signaled the battle resuming.

Without hesitation, they both jumped sideways from the parallel pipes. In other words, into the air. They jumped from foothold to foothold – sometimes to a narrow elevated pathway much like a catwalk, sometimes a concrete roof, and sometimes a bit sticking out from the side of a vertical smokestack. They remained parallel to each other, judging the best timing to target each other.

Sugiyado Souha used his air pressure kunai.

Princess Karin used her hammer equipped with a gun barrel.

Both ninja weapons could be used at close and long range. A moment’s inattention would mean a hit to their vitals, but focusing entirely on that would mean missing their next footing and falling from a great height. It was like a dogfight with death. Their midair interplay of offense and defense was pulled off so smoothly it actually felt odd they had no wings.

And Princess Karin was not Sugiyado’s only enemy.

Her lips produced a bewitching whisper as she spun her hammer like a baton, waiting for the right moment to fire.

“Swift Foot, shoot down the intruder.”

A fearsome attack was launched up from a 2-wheel armored vehicle that looked like a cross between a slimmed-down steamroller and an armored warrior. The weapon resembled a modern bow, but it was actually a cross between a rapid-vibration spear with an ultra-flexible bow made from the same special stainless steel used in the springs for skyscraper earthquake countermeasures. The heavy weapon was capable of tearing through a tank or a 6-legged mobile fortress. Sugiyado performed a flip at the last second and saw the thick crane he had been using for footing partially torn away.

“…!!”

The destructive power rivaled a ship-mounted railgun.

Buffeted by the resultant winds, he veered away from his intended landing point, so Princess Karin directed the sinister hollow grip of her hammer his way from her own footing.

When had she even reloaded it?

The lit fuse gave off a pale orange light reminiscent of a lit cigarette. There was no trigger, so she only had to shove it into the hole on the side of the grip to light the gunpowder within.

(Here it comes!!)

He had no bulletproof equipment, so a direct hit from a ship’s artillery or an ordinary bullet would leave him just as dead. Still spinning through the air, he spread his legs to shift his center of gravity and take more unpredictable evasive action.

“Swift Foot, fire a second round.”

More firepower was launched from the snowy ground, but not to destroy Sugiyado or his next footing.

(The air. Will that change the bullet’s path!?)

The light gunshot was nearly drowned out by the larger blast from the ground. The metal grip had been hollowed out to act as a matchlock gun barrel. The bullet was tiny, but that allowed the wind to more easily alter its path and it pursued Sugiyado with a serpentine movement. Mechanical rifling would have given it too stable a trajectory. This trick could not be replicated with a cutting-edge assault rifle or anti-materiel rifle.

Still hanging in the air, the ninja swung his kunai.

Sparks flew.

He just barely managed to deflect the deadly bullet, but he was the one to frown when he landed on some metal reinforced by the pieces surrounding it like a jungle gym. This was exactly what Princess Karin had wanted. He had let her speed influence him. Even though he knew he could not keep up with cutting-edge equipment once he got used to the old-fashioned matchlock.

She said something while jumping to her next footing. Based on the movement of her lips, she said, “That’s one.”

At this rate, she would gradually throw off his senses until she could finally bring him down.

He needed to eliminate the teamwork between ground and air.

As he jumped around to rise from the third story to the fourth story, he subtly altered what kind of footing he chose. This gas turbine power plant was very obviously an away game flooded with enemies for him, but they could not afford to destroy a piece of their home infrastructure. He used the spacious power plant’s most dangerous flammable objects as a shield.

Also…

(I can choose areas where the path of the pipes would guide the secondary explosions toward her. She’s their temporary master and only princess. That should weigh heavier on the scales than just the facility.)

“Swift Foot, fire a third round.”

“!?”

“What, you think I would fear for my own life after setting foot on the battlefield? Frankly, I am offended you thought me a mere observer here to enjoy the show. Fire.”

He did not even have time to respond to her.

Cylindrical containers larger than school classrooms were lined up in a row. Those suction vessels took in air and mixed that with the city gas pumped in through pipes in order to produce the optimal flammability for use in industrial power generation. If they ruptured, they would spew toxic gas and a single spark of static would cause an immediate-

Kaboooooooooom!!!???

Sugiyado had leaped into the air just beforehand, so the blast slammed into him and unnaturally extended his jump. The incredible heat prickled at his skin like needles and the noise left his ears numb.

At a fourth story height, he tucked his arms in and extended his legs to spin like a figure skater. He used the spin to stabilize his balance like a gyroscope.

“Tch!!”

“You should take this as a compliment, insolent fool.”

Meanwhile, Princess Karin remained on the same footing and spun her metal hammer like a baton. She did not try to pursue him. Was she going to throw the tungsten steel? Whatever she had planned, she was sticking to long-range attacks to cooperate with the gunner on the ground to hit him with the crossfire.

In other words…

“Because I have deemed the damage to this critical infrastructure a price worth paying for your defeat.”

She was not going to let this continue.

Now that she had guided him where she wanted, she would finish him off. The execution phase had begun.

But Sugiyado had never planned to let this last all that long either.

This was an away game for him.

(So!!)

He rapidly spun himself to secure the centrifugal force to throw a kunai like the hammer throw. Instead of aiming for Princess Karin at the same height as him, he targeted the deadly 2-wheeled Swift Foot mount on the ground. The kunai hit the armored arm at the shoulder joint.

It stabbed in.

The blade was forced open by the nitrogen, tearing the arm apart from within using 15 tons of force.

The weapon still had its bow at the ready, so what happened if its aim was thrown off and its finger slipped from the bowstring?

“Do it.”

“Ha ha!! Won’t be taken out so easily, will you!?”

The weapon’s shifted aim moved toward Princess Karin. Her junihitoe fluttered around as she swung her hammer to the side and moved to a different piece of footing. She demonstrated the impressive skill needed to dodge the all-destroying ultra-heavy metal arrow while also accurately sending out a tungsten steel nail, but Sugiyado had altered his spin when he reached out his arm to throw the kunai. The thick nail shot right past his face and then his sense of speed returned to normal.

Princess Karin was about four stories up after landing on the metal latticework resembling a jungle gym that surrounded and reinforced a round smokestack.

Sugiyado landed one step down on the end of a steel beam twisted by the Swift Foot’s attack.

They had both made irregular landings, so they were off balance. There would be no better chance to end this.

“!!”

“!?”

They were past trading words.

No more tricks either.

Sugiyado Souha’s Fierce Fang left his hand at about the time the flintlock bullet was fired from Princess Karin’s hammer.

The two intersected along the straight line path between the two of them.

However…

“Gah!?”

Scorching pain filled Sugiyado’s right shoulder and he nearly fell from his temporary footing.

Princess Karin grinned.

And.

Still smiling, she wobbled to the side from the hit to the center of her chest.

(…?)

She had subtly shifted her position at the last second. He had aimed for her solar plexus to knock her unconscious, yet she had taken it to her chest, which was even more risky. Had she wanted to take the blow where she had the greatest bulletproofing?

The jungle gym of a reinforcing lattice proved to be a poor choice. She was unable to recover her balance and fell limply out into empty air.

“…”

Sugiyado thought for just a moment and then threw another kunai. This time, he targeted the excess fabric of her heavy junihitoe. The blade pierced through and stabbed into the metal wall to pin her in the air, averting the plummet to her death.

“This is over.”

“Gh…”

He had been hit in the right shoulder, but the bullet had only grazed the surface. The bone and nerves were undamaged, so he could still fight.

“Now, it’s time to beg for your life. Take too long and your own precious clothing will strangle you. Struggle too much and you’ll dislodge the kunai and fall.”

But he did not actually have a good reason to care so much about defeating her. His promise with the old man had been about Murakami Michihiko who was alive and he had retrieved Ouka.

Why was he doing this?

Because if he kept the rest of the enemies focused on her, Ouka and the others could escape safely.

The soldiers and 2-wheeled mounts on the ground were locked onto him but could not fire. She had ordered her people to fire with no regard for what would happen to the gas turbine power plant, but they could not actually fire on their own master without direct instructions from her. She was a princess and that status meant something. Killing her could get their entire family slaughtered as punishment.

She was plotting something in this northern land, but he did not need to know the details. He had revealed the secret of the new power source using the underground linear motor train network. He could wait for Ouka to recover and then destroy their Achilles heel. They already knew how to defeat Yukizasa, Oume, and Princess Karin. They had the advantage.

Or so he thought.

But…

(Where’s Murakami Michihiko?)

This looked like illogical revenge.

He could not blame anyone for seeing it that way. And there had to be some kind of deep bond between Murakami Michihiko and Princess Karin. Enough to overcome their differences in ninja school and in position – one an inspector from Edo and the other leader of the Stonewalls. Sugiyado had never expected the young man to follow his instructions. Or more accurately, to only follow his instructions. No matter what he said, he would have second thoughts once he saw Princess Karin’s stronghold about to fall. He might not outright betray Sugiyado, but he would make some irregular action that trip Sugiyado up. And Sugiyado had expected that display of humanity would distract and rattle Princess Karin by stirring up some feelings inside her.

“…”

But after all this, nothing had happened.

Why wasn’t Murakami Michihiko panicking?

He should have been ready to protect her with his own life at this point.

And.

He had defeated and restrained their boss, so why wasn’t Amamo doing anything? That kunoichi was powerful enough to defeat Ouka, but she had yet to make an appearance. Holding something in reserve should have been meaningless when their big boss was about to be defeated. If it was true Princess Karin had poisoned her father to steal his authority as domain lord, then the collapse of her plan would get them all judged as traitors even if they surrendered. That would mean death for their entire family. He doubted Amamo would sit idly by and let that happen.

What could this mean?

“It can’t be…”

Just then, something slammed hard into his back.

A bullet had been fired into the very center of his back by a matchlock weapon with its power intentionally kept low. But this shot had not come from the surface. It had clearly arrived horizontally from the same height.

(Matchlock.)

He could not breathe.

His spine was damaged enough already and it cried in protest over something other than the weight limit.

(Fired from a hammer just like Princess Karin’s!?)

This had caught him completely by surprise.

He had failed to respond in time.

So.

His survival was nothing he had done intentionally; it was pure coincidence. The kunais hidden in the back of his short-sleeved dress shirt had just so happened to function as metal armor.

He was knocked off balance, but before his feet fully slipped from under him, he kicked off the bent and twisted steel beam to jump.

He heard the metallic clang of a strike from the hammer itself. His assailant had pounded hard on the footing he had just vacated. Had he been a moment slower, the assassin’s meteoric leap would have split his head open.

He brought his feet together to land atop a lightning rod and easily turned around.

That hammer was the same ninja weapon used by Princess Karin.

And the final kunoichi had never made an appearance before this.

There was only one conclusion.

There was another.

He saw a kunoichi in a junihitoe who looked identical to Princess Karin!

He did not know how deep the masquerade went. It could have been special makeup, or it could have been plastic surgery. Either way, the photo found on New Sapporo Castle’s classified server must have been replaced with someone else’s for security purposes.

At any rate, he made a split-second decision.

He adjusted his grip on his kunai.

“Was that a body double and you’re the real Princess Karin!?”

“Does it really matter?”

She twirled the hammer like a baton. Every little mannerism was the same, making it all very confusing.

“I have mastered Amamo’s techniques and Amamo has learned how to rule in my place, so either one of us can achieve the same results. Which one of us is Princess Karin and which one is Amamo is a mere triviality to us.”

That was when Sugiyado threw his air pressure kunai.

The 20-year-old in a junihitoe prepared to knock it from the air with her hammer, but then something unexpected happened.

Sparks flew further out in front of her.

A young man had moved between them in midair and knocked the kunai down with a long, silver-shining wind instrument.

This may have been the first time Sugiyado saw true surprise on the junihitoe woman’s face.

“Murakami, you dumbass!”

“What’s this, Princess Karin? I thought you always spoke like a proper lady in front of him.”

Sugiyado smiled a little. His attack had been blocked, but things were working out in his favor. The unverified information from Oume must have reached her, but actually seeing the young man was much more of a shock.

And in contrast…

“Sorry.”

The young man had a bitter look on his face.

He squeezed the words out toward Sugiyado like he was squeezing out his own blood.

“I’m sorry!!”

And.

However Sugiyado felt on the inside, his strategy required him to sneer at the young man here.

“How sweet. With bonds like that, I’m certain this is the real Princess Karin.”

Murakami Michihiko was not fully taking her side. He had saved her without thinking when he saw a blade headed her way, but he also knew what she had done.

(We each had a trick up our sleeve, but Murakami and Amamo canceled each other out.)

He could have ended up in a situation where he did not know which was the real one. Or they could have worked together like identical twins. They would have had several troublesome options available, so he was glad he had avoided them.

Who was an enemy and who was an ally?

The direction blades were pointed on the surface was a trivial matter in the ninja world. Sugiyado Souha had some feelings he kept on the inside here.

(This worked out well for me. You did a good job, Michihiko. I can see why that old man cared so much for you.)

A hesitant blade was a weak blade.

There had always been a chance that metal flute would be aimed at Sugiyado by the time this was over, but he had nothing to fear if he knew it was possible. He could give up on that young man’s help as long as he kept in mind the risk of an attack from an unexpected angle. Sugiyado already expected nothing from him while Princess Karin held onto some hope there, so they viewed the board and the pieces differently. She would never reach victory if she continued to fear a nonexistent ghost piece.

In other words…

(This is my chance!!)

Sugiyado had worked through a lot in his head, but very little actual time had passed.

He was only resting his feet atop a lightning rod, so he could not stay for long.

He aimed for the slight opening created in Princess Karin by the surprise appearance of Murakami Michihiko. He pictured it like hitting the baseball between two defensive players. Either one could catch it by reaching out their hand, but it passed through a psychological midpoint where they were both unsure if they should go for it or let the other go for it, ultimately just watching it fly by.

Also, Murakami Michihiko was in midair without any footing. He could not stay there for long and blocking that heavy attack had knocked him off balance.

So…

“Ohhh!!” roared Sugiyado.

“Move, Murakami!!” shouted Princess Karin.

The boy spread his arms like wings with a kunai in each hand, but instead of throwing them, he made a powerful leap. He aimed for Murakami Michihiko who had his hands full with the one attack. He was imbalanced in midair and Sugiyado Souha mercilessly placed his foot on his gut.

It was temporary.

It would not last.

But he was close enough to attack Princess Karin and with no one to get in the way this time. He would defeat her and end this conflict in New Sapporo Domain!!

“Kh.”

However, Princess Karin had to be equally aware how crucial this moment was. It did not matter if they were the home team or away team or if they were a group or an individual. At this moment, only their skill as ninjas would determine their fate and it would all fall apart if Princess Karin fell. Amamo had already been defeated, so that body double could not rule in her place afterwards.

Which meant she would use everything she had available to her.

“Activate, Tsuchigumo!!”

She held the hammer up to her mouth like a microphone and used the muzzle to vibrate her own voice at a set frequency.

More than an explosive boom, the air screamed with a shockwave. Then the entire world was twisted around. No, the entire gas turbine power plant was struck from below and all the structures within – the smokestacks, the turbine building, etc. – began to collapse one after another.

The earth swelled up like it was a living creature.

Was this the “terrain effect” that Amamo specialized in and Princess Karin had learned from her?

(This isn’t just an artificial earthquake caused by stressing the crust with explosives.)

This was their secret technique which had been described as a dragon hidden in the earth. This was the ninja technique that had defeated Elite Ninjas Ouka and Hoozuki.

“The single…”

He heard a voice.

It belonged to Murakami Michihiko who had said he was going to defeat Princess Karin, ended up protecting her at the last second, and then became a path for his ally to step on in order to cut her down.

But.

None of that meant he was without courage.

Someone without that would never hesitate and struggle like he had.

“The visible single-molecule magnets are only the ignition! They’re actually used to move enough of the bedrock to compress the underground water!!”

He had worried, hesitated, agonized, and struggled, but he had finally gotten the words out.

He might as well have been telling Sugiyado to survive and stop the princess.

Sugiyado would have to take on that task. The consistency of the samurai spirit was found nowhere in the ninja world. Sugiyado Souha was familiar with a much messier form of sincerity, but that messiness was what made it so genuine.

(I see. So it’s the same as a diesel engine. The immense pressure on the underground water causes it to rapidly heat and the steam pushes up at the ground!!)

Dirt swelled up from the ground like a tower or great serpent more than 10m tall, but the very tip had latched onto one of the 2-wheeled mounts.

The rapid-vibration spear attached to the great bow was brought to the same height as Sugiyado.

“Tch!!”

He was stepping on Murakami Michihiko in midair to bring himself in striking range of Princess Karin. Jumping back after all that would be the height of folly. For one thing, the mount’s weapon was a projectile, so more distance would mean nothing in midair with no cover to hide behind.

So…

“Go!! Stop the princess!!”

“That’s…the plan!!”

He took another step.

He kicked off of Murakami Michihiko’s stomach to leap toward Princess Karin who was also in midair. He pictured it like slamming his shoulder at the lower stomach to lift her up. He was already too close even for a kunai.

But at this point, he doubted he could stop the Swift Foot from attacking even if he used Princess Karin as a shield.

He had just one aim.

“Gah!!”

His shoulder hit.

He slammed into the arms she had crossed to protect her internal organs.

Even she groaned from that and they were both flung out into the air. The momentum of his tackle caused him to spin vertically, altering the vector of his curving path.

Then the mass of tungsten steel was launched from the special stainless steel ultra-flexible bow. A direct hit from that could pierce the armor of the Empire’s six-legged mobile fortresses, but was nothing to fear if the targeting could not keep up. And bows all shared a certain trait: once they were used, it took some time to ready the next shot. They could not pull off machinegun-style rapid fire.

The shockwave pushed tumbling Sugiyado and Princess Karin’s paths apart.

But for ninjas who used projectiles, being too close meant greater risk. The great tension of a Western duel ruled the area.

“This isn’t over!!”

Princess Karin had been thrown out into the air at three or four stories up, but she had not lost the will to fight. Her junihitoe flew as she used the muzzle of her hammer like a microphone to convert her voice into ultrasonic waves.

That action gave a special command.

“Lock onto the designated target and attack, Tsuchigumo!!”

But they were up in the air.

Even if she could control the earth like a living creature, there would be a time lag before it reached them here.

That gave him time.

“New Sapporo Domain Substitute Lord Princess Karin.”

Sugiyado Souha had been oriented upside down, but he lightly stepped on some footing.

He used the side of a tall smokestack that had been collapsed when the ground swelled up.

He gathered strength in his knees using the springs that took the place of his ligaments and he readied a Fierce Fang once more.

And he spoke.

“Prepare yourself.”

He launched himself like an artillery shell and crashed into Princess Karin for a midair tackle.

While striking her with the bottom of his kunai’s grip.

### 9: Another

Princess Karin had been fully equipped as a kunoichi. And even if she was on the front line, she was still the domain’s princess. Below the thick junihitoe, she had to be wearing carbon nanotube bulletproof tights just in case. But the impact still reached her even if she did not bleed.

Amamo truly had learned the exact same techniques as Princess Karin to act as her body double.

At the last moment, Amamo had moved to protect her stomach.

The same happened here.

Princess Karin had moved to protect her internal organs, so Sugiyado had instead aimed for the side of her neck. Because even with full-body bulletproof tights, the neck was still hard to defend.

“Kah!?”

As well-trained as she was, she had preserved the slenderness of a sheltered young maiden so she could wield martial arts and sex appeal simultaneously. The muscles in her neck were not enough to fully brace against the impact.

Then they fell.

The two of them crashed into a few pipes along the way, but they finally hit the thin layer of artificial snow covering the surface.

The impact knocked Sugiyado’s breath from his lungs.

The gas turbine power plant appeared to reach its limit at the same time. The broken pipes and turbine building exploded one after another and the entire place was soon wrapped in smoke and flame. He was not immediately shredded by the Swift Foots scanning the area because those obstacles obstructed their cameras and sensors. The heat and metal powder would be damaging the permeation sensors as well.

His spine protested.

He tried to get up, but his body refused to move, like a gear was jammed.

(I may have pushed myself too hard.)

He had known this was how the ninja world worked, but he had done it anyway the instant he saw what had happened to Ouka. He still could not get used to seeing his allies hurt. He could no longer get after those four for what they did last time. He was starting to think his own powerful emotions had infected them without him noticing.

“Heh…heh heh.”

He heard some weak laughter from nearby.

Princess Karin had been caught on a waterproof sheet where she swayed in midair, but the impact still would have been considerable. She lacked his spine handicap, but it would still be a bit before she could get up.

“Is that all you’ve got? Well, it was decently entertaining at least, insolent fool.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But you misread the big picture. We win this one.”

“What were you even trying to do in this northern land? You secured largescale power generation with the underground linear motor train network and you used that to bring the Hokkaido Area’s defense system back online…but that’s a means, not an end.”

She did not answer him.

She knew her death was close and she knew she had no future, but she still kept her secrets. She had not only learned just enough to fill the role. She was a true ninja leader of the Stonewalls.

Just like former Hidden One Sugiyado Souha who led his four students.

(Is it finally over?)

Sugiyado sighed while collapsed on the power plant’s snowy road.

Even with the many explosions erupting from the gas turbine power plant itself, he would be found by the troops or Swift Foots if he stayed here. And even if they left him there, the flames and smoke would reach him. At this point, there no miracle that would allow him to escape unscathed.

Kuhou Ouka.

Hanasawa Bara.

Nantou Hoozuki.

Shizukuma Asagao.

He was glad they were safe. That much he was proud of. His own life had hit a dead end, but he had left his mark on the world. He could let his students handle the rest.

Hearing someone stepping on the shallow snow, he looked over from the ground.

“Murakami Michihiko.”

“…”

He did not interpret this as help having arrived.

In fact…

“If you want Princess Karin, then take her with you. That’s what you came here to do, isn’t it?”

“Are you sure?”

“I had two objectives: repay that old man and rescue Ouka. Whatever Princess Karin’s plan was, I ended it here. If you two disappear now, it should make some waves inside the castle, but it won’t bring any more chaos to New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area.”

Silence followed.

That man’s priorities never changed, but he could not help but hesitate. Sugiyado had to smile. That was dangerous thing for a ninja, but it made him a good person. It reminded him of the old man who had looked after him in the special prison despite having no logical reason to do so.

“Go.”

“I’m sorry.”

Murakami Michihiko gently picked up the junihitoe princess while she swayed in the waterproof sheet like a hammock and then he bowed.

Without a sound, the ninja turned away from Sugiyado and vanished.

Before long, Sugiyado heard a heavy mechanical clanking through the smoke. A Swift Foot’s cameras or sensors must have detected him. There was nothing at all he could do.

(Did that repay you in some small way, old man?)

He started to shut his eyes on the snowy ground.

But he stopped when he heard a piercing roar of destruction. He knew that was the result of the giant Swift Foot’s composite armor being sliced through and its slimmed-down steamroller body being chopped apart, but he still nearly lost himself in the beauty of the music it created.

Someone had dropped from above and sliced vertically through the machine.

The two halves of the silhouette shifted out of place before fully collapsing.

(That was a military sword that uses an arc discharge to pierce composite armor.)

That was an unusual weapon for a ninja.

It was not even Shogunate technology. It had been given a Japanese design to match the kunoichi outfit – or maybe it had the kind of “Western” design that only existed in this country, like a visual version of wasei-eigo – but that “move in close and hit them with a powerful heat source” style of military technology was the specialty of the Kingdom.

“Oh? Giving up already, instructor? Yet you insist on saving others and keeping them in this world whether they like it or not.”

He recognized the voice.

It did not belong to Ouka, Bara, Hoozuki, or Asagao.

This was another kunoichi who had possessed extraordinary power.

Her ninja outfit resembled a sleeveless kimono, but the sides were left wide open, making it look something like a surgical gown. Her long black hair had two distinctive bits tied to on either side of her head. She had a body as curvy as Bara’s, but her sex appeal was so decadent it seemed to be rotting.

In other words…

“Oniyuri?”

### 017. 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.”

### 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…

“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…

“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…

“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.”

### 018. Epilogue

“The Raging Gale sky fortress made an emergency landing on the outskirts of the New Sapporo Domain. It was in an empty field, so there was no damage to the surface.”

“I see,” said Sugiyado.

The interior looked a lot like a chain café, but it was actually an ordinary convenience store’s eat-in area kept separate from the 1st floor store. There were plenty of more fashionable places in New Sapporo Domain, but there was one thing he refused to compromise on as an instructor.

That thing was an incredibly common snack food.

A convenience store was the best choice when you were in search of some Happy Churn.

Ouka sat in the counter seat by the 2nd story window. Instead of her cutting-edge ninja outfit, she wore a fluffy sweater and a miniskirt. But instead of relaxing, she sat straight up like an honor student who had just been called on in class.

“It was apparently designed so it can’t take off again under its own power once it lands. It needs special equipment like multiple single-use rockets if it’s ever going to be made airborne again. The landing has been taken as an effective surrender, so Princess Karin and the rest of New Sapporo Domain intend to deal with them.”

“How are things regarding Princess Karin?” asked Sugiyado while munching on the oval snacks.

Ouka gave him some well-made tea she got from the store’s dispenser. But she was also pouting her lips a bit, perhaps because she had been left down on the surface.

But she was professional enough to not let that get in the way of her report, which was charming.

“New Sapporo Domain Lord Hatsunaga should recover soon.”

There was no pause in Ouka’s response.

There was even a hint of hope there.

“But it was Princess Karin who commanded New Sapporo Domain all this time and resolved the Brown Bears problem. The Brown Bears were the result of a policy approved during Hatsunaga-sama’s time as lord, so this is being seen as the daughter cleaning up the mess her father made. This has proven her ability and increased her influence.”

“…”

People were taking an awfully relaxed view of this when the entire city could have been destroyed depending on where the Raging Gale had fallen.

But Sugiyado did not look down on the people for that view.

It only proved that Princess Karin and the other domain officials were doing their part to keep unease from spreading.

“The Brown Bears incident was a policy failure that threatened New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area as a whole. Princess Karin apparently intends to publicly announce what happened. I imagine Hatsunaga-sama will choose to retire and claim it is to assist his recovery.”

“This is about Abashiri’s special prison. The other Hokkaido Area domains aren’t going to approve.”

“The leaders might not, but they can’t avoid the displeasure of their people. This is too much to placate the people by reducing taxes.”

So in a way, the Brown Bears were getting what they wanted. And Princess Karin hadn’t lost the “puppy” she hid with her thick junihitoe, but it wasn’t all good news.

“The Raging Gale and all equipment aboard are being confiscated as evidence.”

“Including the Brown Bears’ teacher? Including Lignum Vitae?”

“The metronome will be treated as evidence for a while, but it will not be destroyed.”

Ouka stopped there.

An awkward air set in, like a student standing in front of the blackboard but finding she couldn’t write the answer to the problem.

“About New Sapporo Domain’s luxury residential district…the area full of second houses. The armor plating that fell there was found with evidence of certain components having been removed. And there is no sign of Ekaterina of the Cyrillic Empire or Oniyuri of the ABC’s Kingdom.”

“There’s no point in pursuing them. And it isn’t your fault. They aren’t the type to screw up bad enough to be found.”

He meant that to make her feel better, but Ouka puffed her cheeks out a bit. Their ranking as ninjas was apparently more important than he thought.

“Hmph.”

“Hey, my Happy Churn!?”

“These are off limits for now.”

She slid the snack food over from the counter seat.

He wanted to snatch them back, but Happy Churn was fragile. Fighting over them here might cause them to break apart and that was about the saddest thing he could imagine.

He did his best to feign calm as he asked another question.

“You said ‘for a while’. What happens once the trial is over?”

“The plan is to build a museum and keep the Lignum Vitae on display there. The circumstances leading to the Brown Bears’ creation will be accurately recorded and displayed to the public like something from a wax museum. That way the harmful policies of New Sapporo Domain and the Hokkaido Area as a whole will not be forgotten.”

“Will that change things at Abashiri too?”

“Princess Karin has decided to eliminate the entire behind-the-scenes system there, including the Brown Bears. Even if that means ignoring every message sent by Edo who would prefer this is settled more discreetly. It is hard to say how much of an effect this will have. If the rot has reached the very foundation of the special prison, it could mean eliminating the entire prison and distributing the prisoners around the country.”

“…I see.”

Whatever the case, the incident was over.

Edo’s Tenshukaku had only just gotten back on their feet after Oniyuri’s massacre and they were about to be shaken to their core again. But that was none of Sugiyado’s concern.

He had repaid his debt to that old man and eliminated all of his regrets. He had no real reason to remain in the newly peaceful New Sapporo Domain.

“Ouka.”

“Yes, Sensei?”

“I have one last question. Am I officially dead?”

“Um.”

The twintails girl’s shoulders tensed.

Sugiyado had been tentatively considered dead after Abashiri’s special prison was engulfed in flames, but he needed to know for sure.

Ouka bit her lip before finally confessing.

“It wasn’t possible. The fire has been extinguished and all of the bodies recovered from the burned areas have been identified. They were checking dental and genetic records, so I doubt they would overlook you.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said Sugiyado Souha without any real emotion.

Take care of that kid.

That had been his promise to the old man. If it got out a prisoner had escaped Abashiri special prison, walked around like a free man, and participated in an incident affecting the entire Hokkaido Area, it would be a major blow to Princess Karin who Michihiko was trying to support. That made this a problem he had to deal with.

“Wait, Sensei. You aren’t planning on returning to Abashiri, are you?”

She sounded like she was trying to talk him out of it, but he also sensed a dangerous mood in the air.

He detected the sort of determination that would lead her to do just about anything if it would protect her teacher.

And not just her. Bara, who was wearing a red dress and sipping coffee at another table, Hoozuki, who was working with loose leaf paper and a highlighter, and Asagao, who was on her phone, all suppressed their voices.

But.

They wouldn’t be in this position if a single act of self-sacrifice would solve everything.

“Did you really think that would be enough to fix this? My recapture wouldn’t change the fact that I had broken out. My sacrifice wouldn’t save Princess Karin from scandal.”

This wasn’t a problem that could be solved with a ninja sword or shuriken.

They needed to dig deeper and erase some records.

(Honestly. There goes any chance of serving out my term and getting a second chance at an honest life.)

He sighed.

“Fine. The Brown Bears framed Murakami Michihiko for murder, right? I want to testify at his trial and have him found not guilty. Can you prepare to have me appear in court as a witness?”

“Um, uh. I can of course, but wouldn’t that still reveal that you broke out of prison?”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked at her like she had come to school after summer break and said she had forgotten to do any of her homework.

The instructor taught her one of the most basic facts.

“Ever heard of witness protection? If an important witness in a ruthless organized crime case would be at risk for testifying, there is a system in place for hiding their identity. I testify in court, prove Murakami Michihiko’s innocence, and the Shogunate’s system erases my Sugiyado Souha identity from existence. …I hate to admit it, but this will also protect Princess Karin by avoiding the mass media and online news. And ninjas already have their identities erased from the official systems, so the job should be even easier than usual. That way I can be with you, but no one can ever find me.”

### 019. Afterword

That was Kunoichis Volume 2.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Volume 1 ended with Sugiyado being sent to Abashiri, so this one had to be set in the Hokkaido Area. To emphasize that snowy setting, I made sure it was snowing regardless of season and went on to include a secret date and hot spring as a bit of fanservice.

The enemies were a Shogunate vulnerability inspector and the Stonewalls ninja group in charge of defending New Sapporo Domain.

With the change of setting, I also wanted to change the balance of power and interpersonal relationships, so in addition to the basic ninja vs. ninja battles, I had the temporary domain lord princess use her political power to attack Sugiyado.

In Volume 1, Instructor Sugiyado stopped his students’ incident with brute force, but this time he was the one who broke the rules while running around the Hokkaido Area to repay Murakami Shouzou who helped him out in prison.

Whether or not that was the right thing to do, this just shows that Sugiyado Souha’s teachings were at the base of Ouka and the others’ actions. What they did in Volume 1 may have been the result of him unintentionally infecting them with his sense of justice and duty.

I made the Stonewalls into ninjas who originated as a group of diggers who made mines and tunnels. Their weapons are more about what’s cool than what’s logical. Construction and digging equipment have a unique charm, don’t you think!? So this time I made a group that specializes in that.

I also wanted something in common between Murakami Michihiko and Princess Karin, which you can see in the throwing assistance by placing their basic metal weapon in a tube or using the muzzle like a flute to send orders to the Tsuchigumo.

I came up with the Brown Bears because I wanted a different way to show the series theme of teachers and students.

If you compare Ouka and Ootsumekusa or Sugiyado and Lignum Vitae, you should see how they are similar but also completely different. I thought it would be interesting if the enemies are the same deep down but took the exact opposite path.

I give thanks to my illustrator Tajima Ryuushi-san and to my editors, Miki-san, Nakajima-san, Yamamoto-san, and Mitera-san. I expect the all-white snow scenes were a challenge. Sorry for causing you so much trouble again.

And I give thanks to the readers. Saving cute girls isn’t the only form of justice!! So what did you think of this story of a boy fighting to keep the promise he made to a dying old man? Sugiyado Souha used cutting-edge gadgets, charged onto extreme battlefields, and managed to repay a debt the old-fashioned way. I am praying you can accept his way of lie.

And I will end this here.

Hidden One Oniyuri really does steal the scene whenever she appears, doesn’t she?

-Kamachi Kazuma