CW: Explicit language, blood & gore, graphic violence.
He tugs the hood of his cloak down, shivering in the brittle late-autumn frost. Puffs of white cloud obscures his vision as he peers over the outcrop. The road is quiet but for the occasional critter scurrying out of the nearby forest line. In the distance, a low rumble of thunder preludes the storm to come. He chose today specifically for the weather – dark clouds make for a great cover and the Silverswords would be anxious to escape the oncoming deluge. To be harried is to be careless and every mistake is a vital advantage.
“Anything yet?” A low murmur comes from his left. He glances down the ridge at Bucky, who’s shimmied up to the edge on her belly. Behind her are the others – Sparrow, Small, and Bellow, the latter (for whatever reason) flicking through a book. Small sneaks glances and flushes at the contents.
Rin clicks his tongue. “Not yet. My guy says that it should be coming past here at midday, but it’s hard to tell…” He gestures to the blanket of dark clouds above.
“Do you have the detonator? As long as you have eyes on the road, we should be fine.”
He nods, raising the small remote.
Bucky releases a breathy laugh. “I’m still not sure how it’s supposed to work without fire.”
“It’s from the Last Cycle so no need for fire. Instead of lighting the explosives, we just click this switch and–” He splays his free hand, indicating a silent blast. “Those weapons are as good as ours.”
“It’s about time the Mischief were properly armed.”
Rin utters a noncommittal, “Sure.”
Bucky narrows her eyes, as stormy as the skies they reflect. “Tell me again why Sparrow and Small are here? They are unsuited for this kind of work.”
The raven sighs, yanking on his hood in frustration. He’s asked himself the same question more than a few times over. “Look, they found out about the job and wanted in. If I didn’t let them tag along, they woulda blurted the whole thing to Iris.”
According to the Otsuki tradition, a tyro is required to have support during their first mission. Gou volunteered his tyro, Small, as Rin’s support, and in turn, Sparrow volunteered herself to watch over her younger brother. And when Rin asked Bucky and Bellow to help him track down Tiger for information (and explosives), of course they cited their own interest in getting a cut. So it’s in this way that the Rat’s accidentally found himself a four-man team for his first mission.
“You know, I could have done this alone,” he grumbles, shooting a glare at the others. “Woulda been easier than dealing with your clumsy asses.”
“You’re attacking a group of Silverswords, Rin,” Small squeaks, looking rather spooked. “I think it’s better to have your friends here to help.”
“And you,” he hisses at Bell, “what the hell are you doing?”
“Oh, Rat,” Bellow shakes his head, adjusting an invisible pair of glasses. “Just ‘cus you wanna be ignorant, don’t mean I gotta.”
“What?” Rin barks, feeling a vein throbbing in his temple. “You’re reading Sakura’s Shame, you moron! During a godsdamned job!”
“You got somethin’ against the great Teacher, Rat?”
“The great who?” Sparrow’s brows furrow over a pair of fogged spectacles.
“Teacher Ai,” Bucky provides, giving the other woman an indulgent smile. “She is a well-known author who–”
“She?” Bell snorts. “No way Sakura’s Shame was written by a woman.”
“On the contrary, Bellow. Sakura’s Shame could have only been written by a woman,” Bucky says, flatly.
“What is the premise of this book?” Sparrow glances over at an open page, clearing her foggy glasses with her fingers. “It sounds rather intriguing.”
“Well,” the Bull starts, enthusiastically, “there’s this giant vine monster–”
“A-ahhh!!” Small warbles and throws himself on top of the book as though it were a live grenade – and subsequently lands in Bellow’s lap. “I-I-I think we should focus on the road! We have to focus! Focus everyone! Sparrow, d-did you remember to bring everything? Bellow, I think it’s about to rain, so you should put the book away. You wouldn’t want to damage the pages–”
“It’s erotica, dear,” Bucky says, answering the befuddled Healer directly. “If you’d like, I can show you my copy later.” A playful quirk of her lips sends Sparrow blushing until she resembles an overripe tomato. Her glasses steam over as she mutters something incoherent in return.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” the ex-Rose laughs.
Rin rolls his eyes and turns his focus back on the road, absently fiddling with the frayed thread around his finger. When Jun offered to get him a proper ring, he refused, having grown attached to the piece of thread teased from his little lord’s shirt. It feels more like Jun than a fanciful piece of jewellery. In hindsight, he wonders why he made such a determination. He, who values materialism over sentiment…
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
The raven quickly flattens himself on the ground and peers over the edge. In the distance, just coming over the horizon, is a tarped wagon pulled by a pair of horses and a rather burly driver. Guarding the goods are what appears to be six mercenaries on horseback, but the blue glint of their scabbards expose their true identities: Silverswords.
“It’s them,” Rin grins, adrenaline surging into his veins. He readies the detonator, palm sweaty, thumb poised over the switch.
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“Masks on.”
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At first, there’s silence.
A palpitating silence that settles over the landscape like a thick fog, stifling the natural sounds of critters and rustling leaves. Against the backdrop of the encroaching tempest, there’s only the soft clopping of hooves and the creaking grind of wooden wheels.
Rin holds his breath. Anticipation increasing as the caravan draws near.
At this distance, the impatient grimaces can be seen upon the Silverswords’ faces. Their eyes flit between the road ahead and the rumbling skies, and none perceive the strange misshapen rocks spread across the road.
Closer and closer.
Rin’s thumb twitches.
His breath skitters between clenched teeth. Red eye flares like a bellowed flame.
Closer and closer.
The air shifts. Turns static. The hairs rise on his nape. There’s but a second of blinding light that burns the retina before an almighty CRACK splits the sky in twain.
Horses whinny and rear back, eyes wild and rolling in a panic. Shouts of alarm are the inciting call.
Rin giggles, a little mad, a little giddy, and he clicks the detonator.
BOOM!
The earth heaves and erupts. Wild destruction unfurls, filling every inch of the sky with igneous palates. Scorching gusts batter the ambushers and whip the explosion into a crazed dervish of hellfire. The immense noise is comparable to the tempest, and it’s difficult to distinguish between nature’s wrath and the mortals’.
The ambushers hunch below the outcrop, arms raised to protect their faces, riding out the initial shock. Clumps of dirt and debris shower down, some molten hot to the touch.
When the turbulence finally calms, they peer down at their handiwork.
It’s utter destruction.
The decimated road and arboreous woodland are set ablaze. Surviving creatures escape the heat in a panic only to become entrapped in the suffocating haze of smoke. Dead and dying horses are strewn and bloodied, some convulsing, releasing the most blood-curdling of screams.
From the rubble of burning wood and blackened organs, only two of the Silverswords pick themselves up, stunned and deafened. Another two are stirring, moaning around their wounds. Their remaining comrades who had ventured too close to the eye of the explosion are turned to mere mince, their meat scattered around the smouldering crater.
A Silversword retches and vomits. Foetid splatter sizzles upon molten stone.
Rin leaps down the outcrop, flanked by Bucky and Bellow. They skid down the rocky bank and break into a run, stopping for naught as they draw their whetted blades.
Sparrow and Small aim their bows at the guards, ready to fire.
“HALT!” One of the standing yells, raising his blade. Half of his face is charred black and an ear dangles precariously by a shred of skin. “HALT OR DIE!”
But the encroaching trio zero in on their prey, and only the force of the gods could stay their attack.
When they reach the crater, Bucky veers to the left to deal with the one-eared Silversword. She meets his defense head-on, kicking his sword right out of his hands and following with three bone-cracking strikes to the chest. Every move is calculated, impersonal, and done with surgical precision. He doesn’t have a chance.
Bellow splits off to the right, quickly disarming and trussing up the downed men like a spit-roast. He uses his hand-axe to dispatch the screaming horses, blanching under every fresh blood splatter as he chops through flesh and bone.
That leaves Rin with the smaller of the Silverswords. They are snake-like in build and unmoved by the violence around them. Rather, they seem to thrive much like the Rat, by their manic grin. Pink-tinged saliva drips down their chin.
Every move Rin makes is easily dodged or countered, his Southern wind style met with a rogue equivalent, adapted and altered to challenge his training. His every expectation is shattered, his every step unravelled, and quickly, he finds himself on the defense.
Snake strikes with their uniform sword but uses it like one might a dagger. There’s no sense to how fluid the blade moves. It hops between hands and easily kisses each striking tanto.
A burning pain erupts in Rin’s side. Snake yanks their sword free, and a blood mist erupts. The raven staggers back, snarling in pain. He stifles the instinctive urge to use Luna light, heeding the warning from Nuwa that his magic is as identifiable as his face. There’s no need for the arcane here – he’s managed before, he can manage again.
“Why don’t you do me a favour, pet,” he pants, adjusting the shaky grip on his daggers, “and just handover the goods? We can skip this bullshit and you can live to wank another day.”
Snake laughs and whips their blade through the air. Blood sloughs from the gleaming steel. “Nice try, but I’ve been itching for a fight. You’re not taking this away from me.”
The Rat grins, trying to ignore the hot blood flowing freely from his side. “Since you’re so desperate to play, I suppose I got no choice.” He lunges at his opponent, stooping low to the ground to slice at their ankles.
His blades meet air as Snake adroitly leaps. Before a curse could leave his mouth, Rin’s kicked into the ground, the side of his head bursting in white agony. He rolls in the gory muck and embers, before smacking into the singed wagon. He gasps and coughs, smoke stinging his eye.
Snake stomps on his chest, keeping him flat against the ground. He chokes on a pained groan and flops back, head spinning.
“I know you,” the Silversword says, leering down at Rin. “You’re the ones keeping us out of the Slums.” They give a scathing laugh. “Turns out you’re nothing but fools with a deathwish.”
Rin winces as Snake’s boot grinds into his chest. “Fuck you–!”
He snatches for his fallen dagger, but another boot stomps onto his hand.
There’s the sickening sound of tiny bones breaking – a symphony of cracks and snaps as though Snake were stepping on thin ice.
A strangled scream wrangles its way out of his throat. He instinctively tries to yank his hand away from the crushing weight but Snake has him pinned. Nausea swells. His vision blurs. There’s no feeling in his trapped appendage. Nothing but a skin-crawling numbness and a sickening ache radiating up his arm.
“Rat!” Bellow rushes towards the trapped youth, green eyes as steely as his resolve.
Their weapons meet in a shower of sparks. The axe head skitters up the longer blade. Before Bell has time to draw back, Snake whips around the lad in a blur of motion and kicks in him in the rear.
The Bull crashes into the side of the wagon, narrowly avoiding Rin. He blindly shoves a hand through the tarp and pulls out the first thing he grabs.
A sheathed sword careens at Snake and the latter dodges, snickering, “Oh come now! Must we resort to petty tricks?”
Bell’s hand-axe spins towards his head. Misses by a foot. “Put down your sword,” the Bull growls, “and then you won’t have to deal with petty tricks!” A handful of mud soon follows. Strikes bullseye.
Snake sputters and wipes the muck from their eyes. “Guardians of the Slums slinging mud like children. The Slummers are fucked.” They flip their blade vertically and return fire, aiming straight for Bell’s chest.
An arrow strikes Snake in the shoulder, knocking their aim off course. The blade whizzes past Bell’s arm, grazing skin, and embeds itself in the wagon with a dull thonk!
“Erkk!” The Silversword stumbles, clutching onto their wounded shoulder. They whip around to face their attacker.
Small stands upright on the outcrop with his bow drawn. A blazing anger alights his eyes, bringing an immensity to his little form.
Sparrow stands beside him, her own bow drawn, ready to release at the first provocation.
“Why don’t you leave the Slummers alone?!” Small yells, jabbing an accusatory finger at the last standing Silversword. “If it weren’t for you, Gilly would still have her husband, Alma wouldn’t be missing a leg, and Nima wouldn’t be fighting your silly war!”
Snake bares their teeth, hissing in anger, and painfully lumbers towards the outcrop.
“Stay where you are, sir,” Sparrow calls down, tracking his unsteady steps with her drawn bow. “I would prefer not to shoot you if you please.”
The Silversword pauses, swaying. They glare up at the siblings with an insidious smile. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? We thought the drink and the Bliss would be sign enough, but even death doesn’t sway you people.”
“What are you talking about?” One could hear the frown in Small’s voice.
“Children in costumes should not bother themselves with politics.”
“Who are you calling ‘children’, you lizard-faced bitch?” Rin raises a tanto and plunges it towards the Silversword’s back.
An arrow whizzes past.
TING!
The tanto’s struck and it spins out of his hand. Rin curses and shakes out his sore fingers, the broken hand held gingerly against his chest. “Small!” he barks, sanguine eye emblazoned, enraged.
He strikes the stunned Silversword with his elbow instead, aiming straight for their nape. Snake’s eyes roll into their skull. Shocked. Pained. And then they silently crumple, like a marionette with cut strings.
“Small, you’re supposed to be shooting at the Silverswords, not protecting them!”
“Sorry! Sorry, Rin! But we shouldn’t…we shouldn’t act like them, because we’re better!”
Rin sneers, stepping on Snake’s unconscious form as he stalks towards the outcrop. “Is that what your mama told you?” He jeers the word like it’s an insult, and Small flinches in response.
“Mother has valuable insight that we should take heed,” Sparrow interjects, swinging her bow over her shoulder. “However, we have no time to debate morality. We take the wagon and leave before more Silverswords arrive.”
“How do we do that? We ain’t got no horses!” Bellow grouses, trussing up Snake’s unconscious form.
“Why don’t you make use of those big muscles of yours?”
The Bull swells and grins, flexing his arms. “Like what you see, Sparrow?”
“I would rather eat poison.”
“I-I think you are very strong, Bell!” Small peeps, round cheeks flushed as he stares at the bigger lad.
His sister purses her lips and she turns to Rin, tiring of Bellow’s nonsense. “Does your plan not include an escape route?”
Rin scowls and hunches over his wounded side, blood leaking slowly through his fingers. “We go north for five hundred paces. Then north-east into the forest for another hundred or so. There’s an entrance to the sewer system smugglers use. It’s large enough for a wagon.”
“How did you figure that?” Bellow grunts, lifting a coin purse from Snake’s pocket. He weighs the hefty thing in his palm before stowing it away. “Never took you for a smuggler.”
The Rat raises a brow at the Bull.
“Right, I almost forgot who I was talkin’ to,” Bellow laughs, gruffly.
Rin glares down at the unconscious snake-like guard, teeth bared in loathing.
The blue of their armour shines with an offensive brilliance. The Mother’s eyes. The blaring sky. Endless. Crushing.
He aims a swift kick at Snake’s head – and it snaps to the side and rolls in a sickening manner.
Sparrow throws herself down the bank, slipping and sliding on the rocky slant. “Stop! Stop! Why do you keep hurting them?!”
“Why do you keep protecting them?” he snarls, pinning her with his bloodied glare.
“Rin.” Bucky steps over and grasps his shoulder, her tone low in warning.
He shrugs her off with a violent jerk. “The moment I set off the explosives, they were as good as dead. Stop pretending to care now when half of them are dead.”
“I am not so naïve to believe that we would all come out of this unscathed,” Sparrow says, removing her mask. She glares back at the raven, her austere countenance starkly reminiscent of her mother’s. “However, I would like to preserve what life I can. I am a Healer, Rin, and I cannot condone any displays of blatant sadism.”
“Sadism?” Rin barks a laugh, though it lacks any mirth. “How is retaliation, sadism? They ruin everything. Everything.” He casts his glare at the others, trying to bore his point into their skulls. “If you keep your heart for them, we have no chance!”
Sparrow pulls her mouth back in a tight line, displeasure clear in her gaze. She reaches into her Healer’s bag and hands Rin a crimson elixir. “A war without heart would have no end.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he says savagely, before ripping the cork out with his teeth. “That kinda war doesn’t exist.” He tosses the elixir back and within seconds an unbearable prickling attacks his various wounds, indicating healing. “We’re done here.” He smashes the bottle at his feet. Tiny shards of glass cascade into puddles of blood.
The skies finally break open and release their icy deluge upon the battered youths.
Sparrow and Small crouch by the bodies and pray over their departing souls. Their joined voices, however soft they are, are somehow louder than the thunder rumbling overhead.
My rinnie!! People are going to leave you at this rhythm… but i’ll stay, ok?!
Rinnie appreciates you ^3^ Thank you for reading! <33
Why are they so chaotic
And rin… what clozed said.
Thank you for the chapter!! <3
Pffft they all thrive in chaos 😛 Thank you for reading! <33
Fascinating. There’s a part of me that feels sorry for Rinnie, but there’s a part of me that just wants happiness for him and his little lord.
Oh no need to feel sorry for him! He’ll be juuust fine 😀 Thank you for reading! <33