The dock grew darker and colder by the moment. The fires began to die.

Damaged portions of the wooden pier crumbled and splashed into the water below at an increasing pace. The still engulfed in flames Junko, not seeming too keen on the whole burning to death thing, swung both her blades down at her feet. The two steel swords effortlessly split the already frail wood. A few swift cuts in all directions and the woman took her exit. At the last cut a moment of weightlessness overtook her and the seering heat tearing away at her skin evaporated. Instead it replaced itself with a frigid shock as Junko plunged into the cold seawater below. Her escape had been so smooth that an onlooker might have easily mistaken Junko for just another piece of the dock falling away.

Unlike Daisuke there hadn’t been any hesitation in her movement. Junko completed her goals and was out. This left the Garion general standing alone on the dock, holding out his weapon in anticipation of an attack from an already vanished enemy The night’s darkness now advanced on all sides as the flames from the battle fizzled out or as the sea below swallowed them whole. Behind the battle the groans and creaks of a ship slowly taking on water also filled the air. The injuries inflicted by flames and Daisuke’s earlier explosion slowly began sinking the vessel. If there were any more secrets on board they would be pretty quickly buried on the Jinchi coast.

All indicators pointed towards no further ambush waiting for him, yet Daisuke did not drop his guard. He remained rigid and ready for a surprise attack. This type of lull in action was exactly the kind of thing a scoundrel like Motonubu would do to lure him into a false sense of security...

...and that belief kept the injured Daisuke rooted in place until the high pitched shouting of a child in the distance broke him out of his paranoid trance. “The general did it!” Ringo’s chirping was more like the cawing of an accusatory crow now rather than a songbird. “The Garion general with the Sixeyes! He kidnapped Gekko!”

For the second time that day slanderous Annitou accusations caught Daisuke flat footed. That voice was very close, and turning his eyes towards land he could see the lines of Annitou soldiers standing at arms just behind where the fires once blocked their advance. From their numbers alone it looked as though a significant portion of Annitou’s police force now surrounded that section of dock, if only to put out the fires that Motonubu started when the conflict began. Daisuke’s brow furrowed. Once again it looked as though he had gotten stuck with the bill. Another shout, this time from someone sounding much more authoritative, croaked out from the amassed troops. “Lay down your weapon or face the wrath of the Annitou Navy, General Hashimoto Daisuke!”

His muscles relaxed slightly, more out of mental exhaustion than physical. Even his voice now carried that weary tint of fatigue. “Yes, I am General Hashimoto Daisuke of Garion!” he bellowed back, doing his best to conceal that one of his arms was injured and completely useless. “I have no idea what you are talking about! But I assure you I will fully cooperate. I mean, come on,” he gestured with his weapon to himself. “Do I look like I'm holding a hostage? I've been standing here this whole time!”

“No, no, he’s lying!” Now it was Hajime’s turn to excitedly participate in the conversation from some unseen distance away. “He can make copies of himself, he said so this morning! One of his clones must have taken Gekko away!”

Daisuke wished this was the first time a bad joke had gotten in him in trouble. He really needed to fill out those forms more seriously in the future.

Even with the direct accusation, the Annitou soldiers closest to the rapidly deteriorating dock looked hesitant to move in. Dealing with rogue agents was one thing, but trying to capture or defeat a general from any country was not something that common foot soldiers were really capable of. Garion in particular had a reputation for brutality that nobody wanted to experience first hand. That gave Daisuke a window of opportunity to slip away, although doing so would pretty significantly damage his whole ‘I did nothing wrong’ defense.

Fate forced his hand sooner rather than later. An ear shattering gunpowder blast exploded through the air. While it sounded far away, the teeth rattling boom made Daisuke’s earlier techniques seem like firecrackers. The injured Daisuke reacted purely on instinct a moment later. A brief experience with pirates along the Garion coastline taught him to never take unexpected and distant explosions lightly.

Throwing all dignity aside Daisuke dove behind cover as soon as the realization came to him. Seconds later a lethally fast meteor smashed into the dock, punching yet another sizable chunk out of the structure. At this rate this whole section of the pier would be nothing but driftwood by tomorrow morning! A massive geyser of water gushed out from the crater, followed moments later by the cold rain of the seawater as it fell back to earth.

It would have almost felt comforting, if not for the fact that the unseen attack demolished the section of dock that Daisuke had been standing on just moments before. He had some experience with cannonfire in the past, but nothing nearly as accurate as that. Even the soldiers on shore spoke rapidly in surprise at the pinpoint strike. There hadn’t been a flash or anything- where on earth had that projectile come from?

-

Befitting his enormous size the Annitou General Gou used only a couple fingers to pluck out another heavy iron ball. He slammed the huge sphere into a cannon he held up with his other arm, performing the action as easily as one would slide on a pair of slippers. With all the smoke from the dock fire finally cleared, the monstrous power of Gounomouno could finally be utilized! Already the other Annitou forces were pulling back to give him a wide berth for his artillery. Even Ringo and Hajime, the youngest cadets still out in the field, had to be pulled back for safety. This had become a clash of generals and nobody could afford to be caught in the crossfire.

From his vantage point, Gou could tell that Daisuke's attention lay trapped on the buildings nearest to the dock. Searching for his foe there would do the Garion general no good. The night's bleak darkness mixed with the chaotic lighting made it impossible to tell where Gounomouno might be firing from.

It was extra pointless anyway, since Gou wasn’t even in line of sight.

-

“What if he accidentally hurts Gekko?” Ringo tried to appeal to Hajime’s sense of camaraderie. “He’s gotta be somewhere! Maybe he’s on the ship!”

“Dude, come on.” Hajime ducked as another cannon blast boomed through the air like thunder. “Daisuke probably put his hostage somewhere safe, and there’s no stopping Gou when he’s this into it...”

Another heavy boom of hot iron and gunpowder blasted into the air and cut a long arc towards the prone Daisuke. Still grasping for answers he whipped his Sixeyes around, generating a defense wall of force with the wind that whirled around the giant fan. The cannonball easily punched straight through Daisuke’s Divine Wind. Even in the gales of a typhoon, an Annitou cannonball would not waver! As if Daisuke expected that plan to fail, he then instead used the wind to push himself out of the way. It was a sloppy maneuver and sent him sprawling out, tumbling head over foot in an undignified manner. While Daisuke lay face down on a barnacle encrusted section of broken pier the cannonball soured over his head and smashed into and disintegrated the remaining fragments of ship behind Daisuke. This attack completely shredded what remained of the front of the ship and sent the vessel plummeting into the ocean at record speed. The air filled with the sounds of the last bubbling, gurgling breaths of the ship as it sank completely.

Having thought over the situation carefully, Daisuke arrived at the most logical conclusion. There was nothing left to be gained from sticking around here, then! He retrieved his Sixeyes and staggered to his feet while the echoes from the most recent shot still echoed through the air. His escape must be timed perfectly, lest the eagle aim of Gou take him out after another sloppy retreat. The fires finally died down enough to allow the night’s cool air to gently waft back in. Small beads of sweat dripped down Daisuke’s face. The seconds grew longer. By now the cannon definitely could have been reloaded. Yet the lung pounding sound of gunfire could not be heard. What were they waiting for? Motonubu's earlier tactics seemed more and more prudent now; having a human shield in this spot would have been very helpful.

It was only a moment later, as another piece of the dock crumbled into the ocean, that Daisuke realized his mistake. Annitou hadn’t been waiting for Daisuke to make a move. They had been waiting for the number of possible places for him to dodge to disappear. The platforms sustained so much damage that now that only a few scattered posts and planks offered any type of footing. If Daisuke leapt to them he would almost certainly be caught by the next blast or fall into the ocean below. The longer he waited, the fewer escape routes he had left. Somehow Daisuke found himself cornered in an area without any walls.

Trapping foes on the high sea was Annitou’s specialty, after all!

A deep, exhausting sigh rolled from Daisuke's lungs. He gripped the Sixeyes tight in the good hand. It wasn't that he had fewer options. He had no options. Anywhere he jumped would expose him, and seconds after a follow-up cannonball would render his body into a fine red mist. Even the section he stood on at that momet felt weak under his feet, as if it might fall away if he breathed just a little bit too hard.

No, Daisuke needed to meet the attack head on. Despite not being able to see his opponent, nor understanding fully the implication of the challenge, Daisuke rose his weapon up in front of him as if he intended to parry the next attack. It was a standoff, somehow, between two fighters separated by an incredible distance. Was this some trick of Daisuke's? Was it possible, as was rumored, the man's jutsu possessed infinite range? For anyone else to so boldly face an Annitou firing squad would be madness. But the Ghost of Garion had a legacy of wiggling his way out of trouble. Nobody could be quite sure what would happen next.

Perhaps coming to the same conclusion Gou finally released the next volley. A building-shaking blast roared out from his cannon, and the cast iron ball took flight as it arced towards Daisuke’s last stand. Against the starry backdrop of the night sky the black projectile was nearly invisible, so Daisuke didn’t bother trying to look for it. He reasoned the cannon must be firing from somewhere out of sight, it's parabolic arc carrying it over the horizon. Rather than trust his eyes, Daisuke relied on another sense. The cannon must have been in the same location, so the travel time between the sound of the blast and impact would be roughly the same for each shot. Daisuke could anticipate the exact moment the cannonball would strike if that was true, just by counting the seconds after hearing the blast. The only piece missing was what the cannonball was targeting. Even a miss would blow the foundation out from under Daisuke’s feet and sink him into the water, where he was even more helpless to dodge if a second shot came right after. As was becoming common that night Daisuke would need to make a lucky guess...

Nah, luck only got you so far. Snapping out to some unseen signal Daisuke grit his teeth and brought the Sixeyes down in front of him, like a woodman cutting lumber with his axe. The rapidly spinning cannonball collided with the sharp side of Daisuke’s Sixeyes right on time- the only thought Daisuke had time to process while his whole body rattled with bone-shattering force was how insane the aim of the gunner must have been. The target hadn't been the wood at Daisuke's feet or even his torso-the unreal accuracy of this mad bastard shooting at him had aimed at taking out Daisuke's head!

That was hardly the end of it, though. The Sixeye's light weight was entirely incapable of absorbing the force of such a lethal chunk of iron even if Daisuke intercepted the projectile. It was insanity to think something as flimsy as a metal fan would even be able to divert the path of something that weighed as much as a child! And true enough, Daisuke’s weapon wasn’t rigid or heavy enough to smack the ball away. The handle of the weapon shook and warped like a crumbling bridge in the hands of Daisuke as if the whole weapon was about to crumple and disintegrate in his fingers. Those damage tremors shook into his entire body and did more than just rattle his teeth- his vision temporarily blurred as even his skull was shaken from absorbing the brute force behind the attack.

The razor edge of the Six-Eyes let out a whistling howl. It was reminiscent, Daisuke’s mentor used to say, of the sound of the wind blowing across one of Garion’s vast wastelands. The scouring winds of his homeland, over time, could even carve out mountains. In those precious moments at the very edge of the human ability of perceive, Daisuke felt the unstoppable motion of the cannonball force its way through his weapon. The feeling was unmistakable. The sheer momentum of the ball could be felt vibrating through the fan like a nail splitting wood.

Who was the nail, though, and who was the wood?

The Sixeyes, defying its own physical nature, was in fact the one forcing its way through the cannonball. Inertia cut both ways. Daisuke’s strength alone would have never been enough to perform this feat. But combined with the impulse that the cannonball drove into him on its long, gravity fueled plummet down, even a miracle like this could materialize. The impossibly sharp edge of the Sixeyes screamed as it bisected the blunt iron, the two halves of the projectile whizzing past Daisuke on either side. Both sections of the projectile still possessed significant speed and shot past the quivering Daisuke on either side. It looked as if the man had just cut through a bolt of lightning.

Both halves smashed into the water behind him and let out a huge plume of water and steam- the heat from the friction of the cut having melted the solid chunk of metal like ice.

Standing atop his perch far from the dock even General Gounomouno couldn’t help but be impressed. “Never seen that before,” he grunted, not even bothering to reload as the surviving Daisuke slammed the blast of water from beneath him with fire, producing an obscuring cloud of steam. The Annitou forces had fallen so far back by now that by the time they rejoined the fray, the steam cleared and Daisuke was nowhere to be seen. “I heard he could cut arrows, but that’s just ridiculous. Guess I need to start firing diamonds now.”

No evidence of Daisuke’s escape would be unearthed by the Annitou soldiers until the next morning, as the first rays of the sun uncovered exactly how much damage the incursion inflicted on the pier. Divers recovered from beneath the waves two perfect iron hemispheres, their flat inside edges apparently having been melted and forced apart at the same time. The cannonball's cut looked as clean as if someone had cut open a boiled egg.

Usually Annitou had to exaggerate the danger of a criminal when putting up wanted posters, but for once they could post the truth. General Hashimoto Daisuke was a monster.