PART THREE Chapter XXVIII—Shihon

The Capital—otherwise known as Shihon to the locals, was a massive sprawling place, full of high-rise machiya dwellings, shrines, temples, castles and market districts.

The sun was going down, and warm hues stretched across the city in swaths where the peaked mountains didn’t overshadow the light.

On the high-rise machiya structures that were under construction, workers tapped and hammered. They lifted, sawed, shouted for tools. A foreman bent to look at his building plans.

Many of the works wore simple rough spun tunics with short sleeves. Their trousers, that would have otherwise been voluminous, were tied down tightly around their calves with strips of cloth to better prevent them from catching about the work sight.

The city of Shihon stretched out before them an all side where other high machiya structures and castle didn’t over take them. The city was magnificent, sprawling, terrible in its darkened recesses, like crags in a haunted mountain and bright and lively in other areas.

The Royal Palace loomed high up on the mountain range that nearly cut the city in half, a mountainous road leading up those peaks and through them even, where they supported the palace like a bulwark of unreachable stones, making the massive fortress and it’s many sister fortress structures with their high towers and arched-cornered roofs nearly impregnable.

The river Shokari wound through Shihon like a glass serpent reflecting the reds and oranges of the sunset and turned blue and grey where the shadows overtook the light of dusk.

The foreman appreciated the view, drew in a long breath and wiped his forehead. Today’s work had been long and hard, and still he was not finished. None of them were. He glanced down at his plans and reviewed some of the dimensions concerning the scaffolding reaching up to what would eventually be the next story of the machiya.

For all intents and purposes, the lower levels were already being worked on internally, many of the lower levels having been completed. The chōnin could begin to occupy the structure in mere weeks.

The the structure climbed, the apartments would rise in price, whereupon the final roofing would be constructing with its magnificent upturned corners. This structure was planned to have—

“Hey, watch out!”

The foreman, Kaji was his name, turned just as a gaijin rushed passed him, the man’s shoulder coming into contact with his own.

Kaji’s heart lurched as he realized the man had a sword. The force of the blow caused his body to turn. He tried to catch himself by slamming his elbow back onto the table, but it missed and he went down to the floor with a grunt.

“Kaji-san, daijobu desuka?” a near worked asked, and he helped Kaji up.

Frowning with confusion, surprise and a little bit of annoyance, Kaji nodded. “Hai.” He brushed himself off. “Who was that?”

Someone cried out in surprise and a table full of tools was upended. Kaji whirled as five more men with short shorts rushed passed, all foreigners. They moved in such a way, their expressions indicating to him, and the fact that they were similar-like foreigners, that these men were with the first man.

Angry, he moved his head back and forth, trying to get a good look at this well-dressed hooligans trashing his work site.

“Hey!” he screamed, shaking his fist at them. “Nani shiteru no desuka!”

They ran across the scaffolding outstretched upon the side of the structure and his heart lurched. Were these men crazy? What were they—

“Be careful!”

Kaji and his workers, who were now all staring at the men running, gasped in unison as they jumped, their bodies lifting high across the drop that would kill anyone, and landed onto the other machiya construction sight.

Eyes wide, Kaji ran to the edge, staying well clear of the wooden scaffolding that was there to allow the workers to climb the sides of the structure here where the outer wall was being built.

“Great warriors,” one man said.

Kaji looked at him, then glanced back to where they had landed. They quickly disappeared amidst the scaffolding and the flooring that obscured their view from up there.

“Look out! Another one!” shouted someone from behind.

Kaji growled through his teeth, annoyed as—

“Kaji-san—look out!”

He was pulled back by one of his workers as the new figure ran past. Kaji blinked. The woman had pink skin and was barefoot, her eyes were…

Nani?

They had glowed!

“BE CAREFUL!” he cried before she reached the scaffolding.

“Horns!” someone cried.

“Oni!”

The oni stamped across the scaffolding and suddenly a crack sounded, the scaffolding shook and lowered.

The figure cried out, her arms flailing for balance. “UuaaoH! UuaaoH-UuaaoH-UuuuuaaoooOOHOO!

“Help her!”

Another crack and snap sounded, loud as robed were broken and eye-hooks ripped from wood.

Kaji rushed forward, his heart hammering in his chest as he—instinctually—reached out toward the sword wielding oni.

The scaffolding fell, crashing loudly as it dropped. The woman screamed.

“GYYYAAAAaaaahhhh!”

Kaji came up short as everyone shouted and glanced down below. The scaffolding was stopped from falling completely, the nets they had strung up between the structures two weeks ago on the twentieth level catching the wooden boards and planks.

“Is she…?” asked one of the workers. He pointed. “Is she dead?”

“I can’t see her anywhere!”

“She must have fallen… down.”

Kaji growled. “Get down there! We have to find out if she is all right.” He turned and pointed furiously at five of his men. “You and you and you, stay here and make sure no one else comes though here.”

They gawked at him with open mouths and wide eyes, wondering how they were supposed to stop warriors with swords from doing whatever they pleased.

“Yōkai preserve us,” one man breathed.

“Hey—keep your underworld religion to yourself, dark spirit worshiper!”

“Kami-sama!” another man cried. “Just do as Kaji-san says.”

Kaji-san ran with a group of his men to the lift where they piled on. It was an open system with a crank and a chain, the lift no more than a semi-open box for lifting men and supplies up and down the structure.

“Lower us as fast as you can to the twentieth floor.”

“Hai!” the man cried, and he began turning the crank one metallic clank at a time as the curved leaflets slammed against the toothed wheel.

Her scream had been very real. Even an oni with overpowered abilities and excellent regeneration abilities could die if she slammed into a stone street from thirty stories in the sky.

Fortunately the net she had not been planning on, had caught her. In fact, it had failed to do even that, but she had whirled and scrabbled to catch it, losing her sword Kirai in the process.

Because of her efforts, her leg had been caught in the fibers and now she hung, suspended in the air with her arms dangling.

Her heart was strumming in her chest and her ears throbbed with each beat. A dizziness took her, as she was hanging upside down.

She bent her torso and reached up for the netting with a grunt. “HnnnnnNgh!” Rōkura had to take a second to breath. From the run and the sudden exertion of being suspended from her foot, she had to breathe.

She glanced down, unable to see where her sword had fallen too. “Hans is going to kill me,” she muttered as she reached toward her sash to pull out her wakizashi blade—the one Shinjiro had given here after they had arrived.

Hans had complained about him spending their money, but the samurai only smirked and in response said, “Our money. We’re a party now—and I want Rōkura to have this blade. When you pair it with your katana, we call it a daishō—and it’s the mark of a swordsman.”

It meant “big-little,” and as their party samurai had told her, it did indeed mean what he said. People looked at her differently them. She was no longer just an oni gaijin with a katana in her sash—she was a swordsman, a dangerous warrior who practiced the art of blades.

“We do not need to go about displaying our arrogance with the blade,” said Hans.

“It is not arrogance!” argued Shinjiro. “It is pride—but I suppose a cat man who fights with his claws wouldn’t know such pride.”

“Firsts,” Hans had correction. “I am un unarmed specialist, sir.”

“Hmph.”

Rōkura had smiled, watching them spar. Then she had accepted the blade from Shinjiro gratefully, the offer meaning more to her than a simple weapon. In fact, she was a little uncomfortable, because it seemed the gift might have had a much larger significance than she knew.

Using the wakizashi, she quickly cut a hole in the net and climbed through, her ankle tangling even further. She had to move quick to catch Sir Alaric Deen—the man she was going to assassinate tonight.

Cutting a little too fast, she hissed through her teeth with the pain of nicking herself with the blade. But she was rewarded as her ankle came free.

She glanced up, looking to where her target and his honor guard had got off to. They were still up there—she knew it!

Kicking furiously, she jumped and wobbled for balance as she climbed over the net awkwardly to the other side. The other structure was still under construction, so she wasn’t hindered from simple going inside.

She ran into the darkened structure, thinking and smirking with her good luck. Sir Alaric and his men would need to climb down to her, or take a lift, and they wouldn’t be suspecting her waiting.

“You can’t stop me, Persistent Bad Luck.”

Still though… Hans is going to kill me for losing my sword!

When Kaji-san and his workers reached the twentieth floor, they rushed to the side of the structure where they could get at the woman who had fallen. But he and his men came up short, gasping.

One of them pointed. “Look!”

The nets where she had been was wobbling, and a large hole had clearly been cut. Kaji-san realized she must have cut herself free.

He breathed out, both in exasperation, but also in relief. Whoever those people had been, he didn’t want to be responsible for their deaths.

“I need…” he said, feeling light headed from all the excitement.

“Are you well, Kaji-san?”

He nodded. “Hai. I must contact Auchi-sama and inform him of what has happened. This may delay our timetable.”

The men groaned.

Rōkura sniffed, sensing Sir Alaric and his men as her tracking ability came into focus. She could smell their blood. One of them was either wounded, or had scrapped himself somehow earlier on.

Now she could follow that trail.

Her stomach rumbled like an angry army wanting to be fed. She was not planning on drinking these men’s blood—and yet, she wanted it more than anything, could practically taste the salty iron tang on her tongue.

She followed that small to the other edge of the building as her footfalls echoed in the empty space of wood and stone and paper, a strong dusty smell filling her nostrils—the dust and smell of construction, of freshly lacquered wood, of cement and paper materials.

Her ability gave her an image of what she was after. Rōkura could literally see the the smell of their blood, almost like a fine must spreading in the air. She narrowed her glowing aqua-blue eyes and followed, realizing the men had climbed down the side of the structure.

The trail was thick, the smell making her mouth water and her senses turn wild.

Though her need to taste their blood, and the scent of which filling her nostrils wouldn’t make her go into her Rage state, Rōkura’s behavior was on the edge, like a person who had a little bit too much rice wine.

A wildness came out of her, a need and a want to murder—anything for their blood. She would control herself.

She would try to control herself.

Following that trail, she took hold of the scaffolding and slide down the loose ropes until she came to the level the men were on.

She could hear their footfalls bellow, echoing off the walls.

The oni was barefoot.

Quiet.

The smell of their blood visible and luminous in the dark, a darkness that hardly obscured her ability to see them. Despite her bad eyesight to to her Celestial Eyes, she could see well in the dark.

“Did we lose that freak?” one of them asked.

“I think so, Sir Alaric.”

The second speaker gasped as he uttered the words.

They were tired.

Good.

Rōkura followed, slowing her pace and glancing between the half constructed walls and piles of building materials as she neared their location.

The men still had their swords free and Sir Alaric’s weapon was large, fancy, and probably had a magical ability.

Like Kirai—her sword. Her sword she had dropped…

“Let’s… let’s rest here for a moment,” Sir Alaric said as he wiped his brow with his sleeve.

Rōkura stepped into a dark shadow, watching the five men. Two of them sheathed their swords.

“Who is she? Why is she after us?”

“I… I don’t know,” breathed another.

“Is it Lord Derrin? Did he send that assassin to kill you, Sir?”

Sir Alaric shook his head, worried. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “This is something else. This has to be…”

He knew it had to be the game of gods. As a Hokorash worshiper—well not really, but he was sympathetic to their cause—things had been heating up lately.

“Sir?”

“Nothing—talk about it later.” He swallowed, then gasped for more air.

Sir Alaric was dressed well in a pair of dark blue trousers and a fine jacket with loose cuffs. He was the picture of a well-groomed knight surrounded by his equally well dressed pages—his honor guard.

And Rōkura was going to kill them all.