With Ringo ablaze the stark features of the surrounding camp came into focus. Harsh shadows cast every person there (apart from the aforementioned human torch) into sharp relief. Hajime looked into the face of their attackers and...nope, didn’t recognize them. Ringo was more of the type to memorize what people looked like. Despite their stern expressions Hajime could clearly tell both were young- young enough to be his friends, perhaps, in a better world.

At that moment with the whole life and death thing going on, those thoughts would have to be cast aside. Hajime’s spear still lay too far away for the boy to scoop up. For that brief moment the fight came to a standstill. The wind kicked up and twisted the fire further. Ringo flailed helplessly around, which was good because it meant she could use her arms. Hajime hadn’t really thought ahead far enough to know how to put her out. Another thought to put aside for now.

The fallen Yuu, despite Hajime’s blows, was getting back up again and would have the full brunt of his weirdo ghost punches back online within seconds. Having barely held on after the first barrage Hajime doubted he was up to the task to take a second. And as much as Hajime hated to admit it, the girl far behind Ringo with the ribbons far outclassed both the cadets- there wouldn’t be any way of beating her without a miracle or outside interference. Running was the best option, as usual!

Despite having reached such an unassailable conclusion, the somewhat scrambled mind of Hajime jolted him back to action. His heels bit into the earth and he renewed his charge forward. One arm shot out to snatch up the still burning Ringo. New plan! He would scoop her up, since she was pretty small, and run off with her into the shadows and find some water and- no, wait, that was dumb, she was on fire. You couldn’t run into the shadows when you were on fire. And there wasn’t any water around either. Ringo’s jutsu, which she refused to give a cool name to but what Hajime secretly called the Bubblebath, allowed her to create simple, almost soapy foam out of small amounts of certain liquids. Body fluids tended to do the trick- but that would never be enough to quench the grease fire he’d set her on. It was, much like Hajime’s jutsu, nearly worthless.

So his first plan was dumb and couldn’t work, but he was already right next to the immolated Ringo so he decided to go through with it anyway. When your back was against the wall the only way to go was forward!

His outstretched hand swung low, and instead of catching onto Ringo’s, instead a flaming hot wooden baton got slapped into it. Hajime caught only the briefest of glimpses of Ringo’s eyes through the flickering flames but saw not panic or fear, but a resolute anger in them. “Take her down,” she seemed to be saying, “and I’ll take care of myself.”

The skin around his palm flared into agony as he snatched up the burning weapon, but it didn’t slow down in his charge at all. He rushed past Ringo and shot straight towards the ribbon-wielding girl now standing at the ready just a short hop away. She had identified the other boy as ‘Yuu’, but Hajime hadn’t overheard her own name at all. Whoever she was, the girl was already coiling her ribbons around in the air like a whip and her own hardened scowl gave no signs of surprise or hesitation as the boy and his flaming weapon shot towards her. There wouldn’t be a second chance here. Hajime would have to make this count!

Flicking one of her wrists Hana sent out a preliminary ribbon like shooting out an elastic band, aimed less like the lasso she threw around Ringo and more like a sword to be driven into the heart of a foe. Hajime turned his body so the attack smashed into his nondominant arm. The ribbon’s razor edge tore through the sleeve of his shirt and deep into the skin, but he took the blow as if such damage meant nothing to him.

The damage certainly did mean quite a bit to thim, though, and a searing pain shot up that limb as he felt it go weak from the sudden cut. Sacrifice, Annitou taught its cadets, was sometimes necessary. And as long as Ringo burned how could he really pretend as if his own injuries mattered at all? With a shove he deflected the sharp ribbon with his body and it tumbled away for a second before Hana drew it back with a single twitch of her arm. That put Hajime just a bit closer but still- no, still nowhere close enough. Hana had just been testing his reflexes and it seemed she found what she had been looking for.

Both her arms swept together in a cross and brought the pair of her ribbons down at Hajime like a pair of scissors. The angle was just tight enough that he couldn’t duck or jump or perform any amazing acrobatics to escape- and, really, he couldn’t do those things anyway, so the precaution wasn’t necessary on her part. This one looked bad- it all looked bad but in particular this attack clearly carried an intent to kill. General Gou always said the enemies you had to watch out for were the ones that didn’t hesitate. It usually meant they had some sort of plan, or absolute confidence in their ability to succeed. Hajime had neither, and the Metsina girl had both.

But Hajime did have experience! When the boy had been a freshly graduated cadet like Ringo, his first mentor hadn’t been the world renown and mighty powerhouse General Gounomouno. Instead it had been a no name agent, a man so far past his prime that he had to make regular trips to the Annitou archives to get proof he actually was still a soldier. The man hadn’t been skilled, didn’t possess exceptional intelligence, and was easily forgettable. It was the kind of mentorship that tended to end in nothing and produced nothing. And perhaps that's all it would have been to anyone else.

Not to Hajime, though! The nothing man had imparted on just a tiny fragment of hope in the boy. Once the pair had taken down an entire pirate ship, purely by the skin of their teeth, following one simple rule that the nobody mentor had enforced. As long as your heart still beat and your lungs still breathed, there was always fuel left to burn.

A teeth rattling cry ripped from his lungs and Hajime bore down on the scissor attack, leading in with his already injured arm. The sharp edges bit into the skin and passed through with ease. His skeleton rattled as the hardened cloth fabric bit into his bone and he felt an exceedingly unpleasant force lightening its way up the length of that arm. He needed to act before any pain had time to reach the more intelligent parts of his brain.

With the last bit of control he could muster before completely losing sense of that arm he forced it upwards and over, bringing the two ribbons embedded in the limb with it. Hana’s pressure did not relent and with a sickening snap a moment later both ribbons cleaved through the rest of Hajime’s appendage. However they did so well above the boy’s head, and after passing through his arm they continued on their merry way into the night’s empty void. Now Hajime stood in between Hana’s ribbons. His one remaining arm still brandished a burning weapon, and now nothing stood between him and the girl. As before her expression refused to acknowledge this change in situation. Her arms performed a reflexive jerking motion to draw her ribbons back for defense but despite her expert control, Hajime knew he could close the gap in time. A last second surge of energy forced him forward. There could be no backing down now.

At this distance and by the light of his incendiary baton Hajime could make out that the girl was wrapped in her ribbons, all the way up and down her arms and legs. Maybe she required constant contact with the cloth for her jutsu to work. It meant she was wrapped up in the equivalent of a long fuse. A single graze from his flame might set her ablaze just as it had Ringo, who had been similarly wrapped. That spark of hope inside the now one-armed Hajime drove him forward with a renewed vigor. He could do it! He was there, now! With that blow could turn the tides!

Like a hammer he rose his still cooking arm up in the air. He would swing it to maximize the amount of flames that would make contact with Hana. He didn’t need to physically break any bones of hers or anything. If he could set her ablaze then it would all be worth it. In some ways it would be easier this way than if he had his spear. A real turnabout! His arm came crashing down right as Hana pulled into range. Even if she stepped back-

-but she wasn’t stepping back-

-or tried to deflect-

-but she wasn’t trying to deflect-

-the embers would make contact. It was his! Hajime had victory in his grasp!

That feeling of elation made him smile through the pain. He couldn’t help smiling it even as his hand passed empty through the air and failed to connect at all with Hana. His now very crispy arm thrust out in front of him, but that was all. Just his arm. The flaming baton was nowhere in his possession.

He thought for a second maybe the pain was making him see things. After all the orange illumination from the fire still let him see what was happening. So he must still be holding it, right?

The shadow being thrown onto the ground below him let him piece together the puzzle. Below him he saw not just two, but dozens- uncountable, really- long thin shadows stretching out far above him, reaching all the way back to the enemy in front of him. The night’s stark darkness hid that horrifying fact. The girl didn’t just have two ribbons at her command- she had a veritable curtain of the things.

His weapon fizzled out into the dirt as it landed some distance away, having been knocked completely out of his hand.

Moments earlier, while Hajime ran off to do his own thing, Ringo continued her rapid conflagration. Certainly the flames kept her shielded from a frontal attack at the cost of, well, being on fire. Nonetheless with oxygen reserves depleting Hajime deep into his own problems Ringo realized that she would have to put out the fires herself or face certain demise.

And while dying for the Annitou cause was quite literally the one thing she had trained for her entire life up to this point, it felt a bit premature to bite the dust because a teammate was incapable of thinking of any other way to rescue her apart from setting her alight with a bunch of lamp oil. So Ringo quickly sorted through the options for escape and found them all terrible.

The heat forced her eyes closed, and the pain kept her body’s movements limited. Not being able to breathe because of the temperature either was certainly limiting as well. Even if there happened to be a fire extinguisher a short jog away from her current location, Ringo had no way of reaching it. And since this was an abandoned logging camp without anything of value in it...there was nowhere she could have ran anyway. Having fewer options did make this a lot easier, at least!

Her meager jutsu, good only for pulling tiny distractions, couldn’t fight back against the most mundane of dangers in a simple fire. This might have made her feel bad but that was something that Annitou also prepared her for. The weakness of an individual must be compensated for by cohesion to a group. The power of friendship, as it was sometimes mocked, was the true strength of the islands of Annitou! Ringo wouldn’t ever call anyone a friend but the general thesis could not be disputed. Right now Ringo needed to rely on the assistance of others. With Hajime preoccupied and Gekko kidnapped and not another soul within helping distance as far as she could tell, it meant that there was only one person left to rely on.

Ringo was not ashamed to rely on others when the time came for it. At that moment she threw her lots in with an unexpected ally. He could help her, whether he wanted to or not.

She fell right on top of the still rising Yuu.

The boy had enough sense to let out a few yelps of panic at having suddenly been brought into Ringo’s level of hell. Instinctively the boy’s legs forced him forward in a kind of half frog leap, but the now very spicy Ringo found a handhold on his cloak and kept him pulled to the ground. “We’re going down together,” her grip seemed to say, “unless you do something about this fire.”

This put the still reeling Yuu into quite the position. Hajime’s bum rush caught him off guard, even more so than the boy’s apparent ability to shrug off Yuu’s well practiced concussive technique. Combined with how Daisuke avoided those organ crushing blows the previous day Yuu was rapidly starting to lose faith in his Hand of God.. Now with this tiny girl clinging to him like a tick and the flames eating away at her now beginning to get onto his own clothes it looked like even his mighty abilities were nothing in comparison to the most basic of household hazards. No wonder General Daisuke’s mastery of fire was so formidable look at how much damage and chaos a simple lamp flame had wrought!

Yuu’s mind churned through the same options that both Ringo and Hajime considered earlier, and fell to the same conclusion. There was no easy way to put out this inferno. Rolling on the ground wasn’t even viable since Ringo’s small but still cumbersome body prevented any immediate rapid movements that might quelch the ever spreading flames. On top of that now that both of them had fallen back into the dirt there wouldn’t be any quick way to pry himself loose either. He could feel the heat searing through his legs and the situation’s seriousness hit him even harder. Yuu definitely could overpower Ringo but by then he would be sharing her same fate- and trading his life for hers was nowhere near worth it.

Conventional Metsina warfare wouldn’t solve this dilemma. Around him he gathered his phantom strength, ready to deliver a powerful remote force with his hands to anything he could visualize. Pummeling Ringo felt the most right as far as options went but it wouldn’t likely produce any results. The girl’s death grip couldn’t be easily loosened with a few seconds of furious blows.

It left remarkably little else to work with. The force Yuu could project was, when it all came down to it, simple pushes. He could not grab handfuls of earth with his technique to try and bury them, nor could he pluck Ringo out like a bug and flick her somewhere safe. Whatever he did would need to happen within that small window of opportunity, and at that exact moment the panicked Yuu couldn’t think what that solution might be. Yet every second that ticked by brought the flames that much closer to coiling around him as well. The solution was without a doubt in front of him- it was just a shame he couldn’t see it with all the fire everywhere!

Then like a bubble the idea popped into his head. It was terrifying- untested and unpracticed, a use of his technique unsuited to every application but perhaps this exact one. For a Metsina royal family member to be brought to such a place was disgraceful enough! Despite the difference in their formal ranks Hana and Yuu were actually both fairly equally experienced and trained, and that made the sting of getting forced to the ground by some Annitou child all the more insulting. Yes, there was no other choice but this, given the circumstances. It was unfortunate this would also put Ringo’s fire out (if it worked at all) but Yuu couldn’t allow himself to be put down in such an awful way. His fingers dug into the earth as he braced himself.

A choking cloud of dust erupted from around the two tangled cadets as his projected force sliced through the air around them. His teeth clenched as the air was split, each thrust aimed to brush as close to the flames as he could. As if it wasn’t hard enough to see the obscuring debris being generated from the air pressure prevented Yuu from seeing where exactly Ringo was, though he could still feel her clinging to his legs like a parasite. Despite this his onslaught continued, and continued, one jab carefully timed to follow up with the next, the air weaving in and out in a spiral that fell onto the two kids like a dusty blanket.

It was breathtaking. Literally, Yuu couldn’t breathe. His jutsu moved so much air, so fast, that the inferno quickly ate up all the available oxygen and left nothing but choking ash for himself and Ringo. Sweat poured down Yuu’s face as he strained to concentrate, his technique only just keeping the outside air from reaching inside to replenish the flames. After what felt like a lifetime, his stinging eyes felt the hellish light grow dimmer. The heat grew weaker. The fire, denied its fuel, began to die.

Right at the cusp of his stamina, before the inferno disappeared completely but had been reduced just enough, the charred Ringo finally relented. She released Yuu and pushed herself off his body, rolling away into the dirt and into some nearby weeds. Rather than ignite the girl managed to smother out the remaining flames, which prompted Yuu to quickly drop his exhausting technique and furiously begin patting out the lingering embers still smoldering on his clothes. It wasn’t obvious to him how much damage she sustained but the girl almost certainly wasn’t in any condition to fight back after that exchange. Neither was he, in all honesty. Somehow Yuu managed to rise to his feet, and on trembling legs be began to shake loose the ash and cinder that part of his cloak had been reduced to from close contact with Ringo. What an absolute pair of nutcases, these Annitou people were!

Then a flaming chunk of baton soared overhead and nearly hit him, causing him to emit an actual scream and dive for cover lest he become doused in flames again. The baton clattered down to the earth just a distance from him, its flames quickly petering out. Having expertly dodged the baton Yuu’s head shot back towards where it had flown from. Was Hana in trouble?

Hajime now stood disarmed and completely helpless. Actually disarmed, as it seemed the boy seemed to have lost some weight. Typical Hana, not pulling any punches when it came to horribly maiming and crippling even a child. That’s how it had to be, sometimes! The first onslaught of fear and distress gave way to an elated sense of success. They had done it! They had...beaten two incredibly weak Annitou cadets! Truly this was a moment worth celebrating.

Yet there seemed to be a standoff. The longer Yuu watched the more that initial feeling of victory became laden with the weight of doubt and suspicion. Why wasn’t Hana finishing this? Was she waiting for Yuu? Trying to pull more information out of the boy? Perhaps Hajime could shrug off blows from Yuu’s projected strikes, but there wasn’t any escaping from Hana’s ribbons once she hardened and strengthened them. She could just capture him at this point. Well, unless you set them on fire, which apparently was every soldier’s weakness. Nobody was perfect after all.

A cold sweat mixed with the blood and tears Hajime had to shed just to get to this point. He could feel every breeze. His body felt light as a feather, perhaps owing to the fact a significant chunk of his body had been removed and flung an unknown distance away. Above him, some indeterminable number of somehow deadly sharp ribbons wafted like so many kites caught in an updraft. It reminded him of those old samurai movies, the kind that Gekko constantly made fun of. Except this wasn’t really as cool, what with the whole bunch of dog corpses and burned skin smell and all that other assorted nastiness.

Oh, right, and there was the horrible, throbbing pain from his severed arm to deal with. Actually this was nothing like the movies. The agony was so blinding Hajime doubted he could put together even one more cohesive plan. In these dire straits there was only one thing left to do. He would have to use...that.

Using his one remaining arm he pointed his finger forward, striking a pose that might have been more intimidating if he didn’t have a bloody stump for an arm. “Good grief.” Somehow his voice managed to not crack, which was a good sign! “You really pissed me off now.” Aw yeah. Expertly delivered. Hajime would have patted himself on the back if not for the lack of hands with which to do so.

The bandage wrapped Hana, ready to at a moment’s notice dice the child up into bite-sized bits, just continued to glare out with murderous eyes. Was the kid joking? Stalling for time? She wouldn’t let this farce go on any longer if that was the case. Feeling the power within her flow outwards Hana’s ribbons trembled in midair as they began to harden. She wouldn’t need more than a moment. With just a twitch of her wrists she could-

Agents, the good ones anyway, never let a single detail slip by them unnoticed. To her right came a sound, a rustling in the low-lying vegetation unlike that caused by the wind. It was unnatural- and therefore unwelcome. Using a single ribbon, as to not remove the dangling threat of death from the boy, she easily swiped and shredded the nearby bush. Behind it lay absolutely nothing but shadows.

A trick? No- again, the sound of moving vegetation rustled. Now it was behind her- the target was moving! Her eyes strained, trying to look past the dumb kid and his posing to see if Yuu and the girl were still where she had left them. As expected both of them were still far away, with Ringo lying motionless on the ground and Yuu having ducked for cover for some reason. Had he seen something? With the fires now gone only the moonlight could be used for illumination, and since knocking the boy’s inflamed weapon away her eyes had yet to adjust to the darkness. It was the perfect cover for an ambush.

As she sliced another overgrown clumping of weeds apart Hana felt that sensation of losing control beginning to seep into her thoughts. It was a coincidence. It had to be. It must be. And yet- and yet the pieces all fit together. A flaming wooden stick was a terrible weapon. There had been no reason for the boy to use it. Hana disarmed him just in case, but in doing so she hadn’t realized how much her eyes had adjusted to its reddish light. Even with her excellent night vision it took time to get used to the darkness again. This whole time the Annitou cadet had just been trying to distract her!

Her eyes whipped back to Hajime. The kid was an idiot, if this was a trick then she would be able to clearly see it on his face-

“Alright, now you’re screwed!” Hajime’s face lit up as he made the same deduction Hana did, despite the monumental pain he was in. “Annitou always sends back-up, baby!”

That was as sincere a response as she could expect. Letting out a frustrated ‘tch’ she shifted focus and slammed her ribbons down into the earth where they stood. Hajime yelped and made an attempt to dodge, but since Hana hadn’t aimed at all and reacted on instinct none of her weapons made contact anyway. As soon as Hana made the motion all kinds of unseen noises began to rattle off behind her. Footsteps? Weapons being drawn? No time to worry about it now! Running forward she used the leverage provided by her rigid ribbons to pole vault over Hajime, just in case the kid had any more tricks to pull, and land cleanly on the other side. Yuu was already standing up again and was following Hana’s lead unquestioningly, as he always did. Feet pounding behind them the Metsina pair shot off into the night, towards the jungle.

“I told you,” Yuu panted as the two began to weave their way through the trees. “Annitou always leaves guards at crime scenes. If we had just waited-”

“Shut up and keep running.” Hana wheezed back. They had gotten what they wanted anyway. No reason to risk getting captured at this point.

“Yo, guys!” Hajime, grasping his stump of an arm as he stumbled around the night’s darkness, used up what little remaining energy he had to shout out to his allies. “We’re over here! Those agents went that way-” He wanted to point but, again, didn’t really have the spare limbs to do so. “We’re fine, go after them! I mean, I’m fine. Maybe look at Ringo. Hey Ringo, are you fine!”

Finding some of his severed arm Hajime scooped it up as casually as one would retrieve a lost sock, then resumed his yelling. “Okay, I might not be fine! But go after them anyway! It’s cool!”

He waited a bit for a response, expecting a typical Annitou soldier to scold him for being so loud, but all he got in response was a very distant and likely unrelated series of dog barks.

“I- uh, oh.” Hajime blinked a bit just to verify as he grew accustomed to the darkness again. “Oh. Oh, no.” Ringo, now fairly blackened by Hajime’s brilliant plan, could barely pull herself up to a sitting position as Hajime approached. As usual the boy was taking a bit longer to recognize what transpired than normal. “Ringo, that- was all that you? I didn’t think your bubbles could make that much noise! Man, wait until Gou hears about-”

“Sir, we can talk later.” Ringo’s strained voice carried enough of her usual tone to signify the girl wasn’t in any immediate threat of dying. “We need to get this clue back to Headquarters.”

Maybe it was the blood loss, or maybe it was the thrill of the moment, but Hajime couldn’t be sure he had heard Ringo right. “What? What clue? Those Metsina dudes didn’t say anything useful.”

“They know General Daisuke is collecting artifacts.” Ringo coughed up a dry, dusty breath, then wobbled up on unsteady legs. “And if he’s headed into the jungle, there’s only so many places he can look for them. Those are important clues!”

“Okay. But, hear me out.” Hajime collapsed down, the fatigue finally having set in. “Won’t we get in trouble, after all we just...” he looked up at Ringo for a moment, saw the face she was making behind the thick coat of soot and grime, and immediately relented. “No, okay, yeah, I see your point. We’ll head back immediately. Uh, say, I know you got your own problems but, uh...did you happen to see my rest of my arm anywhere?”