~~~

‘Are you drunk?’

Lord Jun’ya flinched, seemingly annoyed at the air in front of him. Then turned his head to the guard with the vial of mysterious liquid, checking to see if his hand was shaking.

‘Not him, you,’ corrected Misora, shifting her arm as much as she could within the wooden wedge restraints, trying to gesture towards the blue stains on the Suwa General’s chin.

Curious, the guard with the vial followed her clumsy pointing.

As did the two other guards at the cell door.

‘What was it, grape and shōchū?’ continued Misora, one eye on the vial. ‘Or one of those new muscle building things? Bit of blueberry, bit of Indian herb, bit of desperation…’

One of the guards at the back chuckled, quickly morphing it into a cough when the guard next to him elbowed him in the hip.

‘Enough distractions,’ whispered Lord Jun’ya, running a fingernail along his own chin, possibly aware of the faint shade of indigo it was displaying. ‘How did they escape? The truth, this time.’

‘We’ve just been through all that.’

‘Yes, with lies.’

Misora sucked in air and dust, held it, blew it back in the Suwa General’s face. ‘There was a young girl, she appeared by the cells, somehow had the key and let them all out. And because you’re still busy messing around in here, with me, they’ll probably stay out forever.’

Lord Jun’ya bent down and, without ceremony or restraint, grabbed Misora by the cheek. ‘Do you wish to have your skin ripped off? Melted?’

‘A young girl. Appeared by the cells. Had the key. Let them out.’

‘Pedant…’

‘It’s the truth.’

Releasing her cheek with a reverse pinch and rising back up, Lord Jun’ya flicked a hand at the guard nearby, sending him down as a replacement. ‘A few drops on her fighting hand.’

The guard nodded…then paused, switching eyes between both of Misora’s wrists trapped in the wooden block [a new device, just imported from China].

‘Right hand,’ clarified the Suwa General, adding ominous synth as he breathed out. Or frustration synth and ominous because of that.

‘Yes, General,’ replied the guard, seizing Misora’s good hand [and the wooden block] and tilting the vial over the back of it.

‘This is completely unnecessary,’ said Misora, eyes watching the rim of what she suspected was an acid delivery system, possibly one of those new European things. ‘You’re a seasoned interrogator, you must know by the tone of my voice that I’m telling the truth.’

The guard paused, waiting for a second confirmation.

‘Conditions must be set,’ answered Lord Jun’ya, raising his own right hand, dropping down a finger at a time…then dropping the final one with a flourish.

‘Wait…there’s no need, I just-…

The last half of Misora’s sentence dissipated into a muzzled moan as three drops from the vial landed on her hand, instantly creating a sizzling smoke effect. And then the faint aroma of burning flesh.

‘… … … … …’ she slurred in Kai Province slang.

‘Now that we understand the limits, let us try again.’ Lord Jun’ya stepped forward, putting a hand on the guard’s shoulder, who carefully stood back up with both eyes and both hands fixed rigidly to the vial. ‘How did the prisoners escape?’

‘You could’ve used my other hand…’

‘Did the guards help them?’

‘…now I can’t eat properly. Or drink. Or throw stones in the river. Or at your head.’

‘Did they have a secret tool, hidden?’

‘Can’t even pick a stone up…or a pebble…’

‘Was there someone else in the cell?’ said the Suwa General, overpowering her pebble, and adding a flick of azure flare to his eyes.

‘Someone else? Yeah, an eight-tailed fox…annoyingly caustic, weird silvery glow…bit through the lock and then put it back together again so you wouldn’t know about it.’

Misora let out a long, irritated breath with the residue of her sentence, trying to rub the acid burn with her elbow, half expecting another dose.

But it didn’t come.

Lord Jun’ya was too busy staring into the other cell. For over a minute. Then, when staring from a distance clearly wasn’t enough, he swatted the two corridor guards aside and marched right in there. Stared at the graffiti on the walls. Dipped the heel of his zori into the rat remains on the floor. And, as a final act of weirdness, got down on his knees and crawled back out, his nose sniffing dust and zori scuff marks on the old stone.

‘Okay, now you’re definitely drunk.’

The Suwa General didn’t respond. Instead, he pressed the tip of his index finger into random parts of the stone floor, then brought it back up to his mouth and licked it.

‘Any fox trail?’

After another minute of self-deliberation, he got back to his feet, looked up the slope towards the end of the passageway like it was an ambush militia, then came back into her cell, pushing the guard aside and grabbing Misora by the hair. ‘Who was the fox attached to?’

‘Wah, you believe that part but not the girl…’

‘The ashigaru? The monk?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did it speak to you?’

Misora pulled her head back, away from the glare of the giant Suwa face with weird blue stains, and now the weird azure eyes, and then got yanked right back again by his grip on her hair.

‘If I tell you, will you let me go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Err…okay. That was surprisingly quick. Can I have some kind of writing to back that up?’

‘No.’

‘Then how can I really trust that you’ll-…’

Abandoning the hair vice, the Lord Jun’ya switched to double-handed, taking both of Misora’s cheeks and squeezing hard into the bones. To enhance the creepy, supernatural possession feel, his eyes started glowing, just like her old ex-friend Atta Noe.

Fuck, she thought, compartmentalising the cheek pain, another demon. Didn’t they have anything better to do? Didn’t their own world have entertainment?

Atta Noe had said it was deeply boring and heavily regulated, but that was Atta Noe, the master of being bored. This guy though…if it was a guy…probably not…but this guy, did he really get anything out of being second in command to a human? And a lunatic Suwa one at that?

There was no way to know, and no neurons willing to do the digging as the pain increased and her cheekbones started to crack.

‘The monk…’ she managed to eke out, among all the groans.

The squeezing stopped instantly, and the glowing eyes powered slowly down to zero as Lord Jun’ya asked, softly, if she was certain.

‘In his beads…the monk’s hair…they talked about it, the fox staying in there.’

The Suwa General stood up and straightened out his uniform.

‘If you let me out, I can catch them for you.’ She looked at the three guards, the one with the vial still watching the rim like a hawk. ‘Faster than any of these vegetables could.’

‘Yeah, with your gammy hand…’ muttered one of the guards at the door.

‘And woman legs,’ said the other, getting a huh and my sister’s pretty fast from his colleague.

‘You two, with me,’ barked Lord Jun’ya, walking like a blade through the middle of them, shouting back at the acid guard to stay by the main door.

‘And the prisoner?’

‘Do not go near her cell. She is far too dangerous.’

The guard frowned, clearly unconvinced, but obeyed anyway cos if he didn’t he’d be in a cell of his own, getting the same vial of acid poured on his genitals. And his eyeballs. And then down his throat.

Such was the life of a Sengoku prisoner.

‘You’re lucky it’s only the hand,’ he told Misora, closing the cell door panel and hovering by the bars for a while.

When she only mumbled hhhrrrrr in response, he said it again, adding that he’d once seen the Suwa Daimyō himself splash acid on a concubine’s breasts, and then force her secret lover to lick it off.

‘And that was just round one of the punishment.’

Misora nodded mostly to herself. Looked at the guard. Took a dusty dungeon breath. Scrutinised the melted patch of skin on her right hand. Flexed the fingers on her left. Sucked in more dust. Let it out. Then moved over to the gap in her yukata.

‘It’s quite hot in here,’ she said, pulling it apart just enough for the guard to see the side slope of her breasts.

‘Feels normal to me.’

‘If I could just get this yukata down a bit…’

The fingers of her left hand continued plucking at the edge of her robe, as much as they could with the wooden restraints impeding them, but that was actually a good thing as revealing too much would instantly dilute the eroticism of the act, and if she was to have any chance of getting out of this cell, she would need the guard to be on the verge of-…

Wait, where did he go?

She looked up, seeing the bars of the cell empty.

Kuso, a puritan?

‘Sorry, but you’re not that pretty,’ echoed the guard’s voice from somewhere deeper in the dungeon.

Wah, maybe not that extreme…but definitely disciplined. That was probably why he was stuck in the dungeon with a female prisoner while the other two perverts had been ordered away.

Kuso, kuso…

Giving up on the yukata striptease, Misora went back to her injured hand, using the pain from the wound as a motivational tool to come up with a new plan. Somehow, she had to get the guard, who had apparently poured ice water on his genitals pre-shift, back into the cell and close enough for her to incapacitate him. With only her left hand.

She held up her wounded paw and tried wiggling the fingers.

It worked, they danced, but…

Painful.

Far too painful.

Accuracy and competence not at all guaranteed.

She switched focus to the wall opposite, studying the scrawled red text that said DEATH IS before trailing off into meaningless squiggles.

Was that blood?

Probably.

Kuso.

Down the passageway, or up the passageway considering the slope, the door panel opened and a heavily disguised female voice asked if the guard was feeling lonely on such a damp and grey morning.

Wah, was that…

Misora pushed onto her knees and crawled awkwardly with her wounded hand and wooden block over to the cell bars, just in time to see the guard grab a very underdressed and stern-looking Ichiko by the upper arm, and tell her that she looked like a miserable cunt. However, as luck would have it, he loved miserable cunts and, as long as she didn’t have a triangle patch downstairs, they were good to go.

‘Not a puritan then,’ muttered Misora, half-smiling.

‘Is it just you here, or do you have some friends we can play with?’ asked Reiko, pulling her yukata so far across her chest that she almost flashed a nipple.

‘You two stay outside,’ barked the guard, pulling Ichiko over to the rest bench at the side. ‘This one is mine.’

‘Yes, but is there another guard we could approach? Your colleague on duty here perhaps?’

The guard removed his hand from Ichiko’s shoulder, dropping it slightly towards his katana belt. ‘Why do you keep asking that?’

‘We are working girls, customers are our life blood.’

‘Based where? Under who’s authority?’

‘Suwa, of course. Independent operators. Which means all payment goes directly to our purses. Now, where is the other guard? We really need to-…’

‘Back against the wall,’ ordered the guard, unsheathing his katana and pointing it in the same direction as the geyser of blood that had just burst out the front of his throat.

‘Ichiko…’ shouted Reiko, staring back at her accomplice, the guard’s blood dripping reluctantly down her face.

‘He’s alone,’ she replied, wiping her dagger on the guard’s uniform, then pushing his still upright, still-bleeding-out body down onto the rest bench with one finger. Then nodding in approval as it slumped off onto the elevated tatami platform.

‘We don’t know that for sure.’

‘I think I’ve got some of his windpipe in my eye,’ moaned Kanae, pulling the collar of her yukata up to wipe it off.

‘There’s no one else here. And we just saw three of them go out. Besides, this whole charade was demeaning.’

‘Seduction is a ninja fundamental. You yourself told me that.’

Ichiko tutted, then strengthened it into a growl. ‘Pulling your yukata off and spilling your breasts out is not seduction. If you’d trained longer, maybe you’d realise that.’

‘Ah, it’s okay, it’s just a bit of flesh,’ said Kanae, pulling out a chunk of red stuff from her eye. ‘Not bone.’

Both Reiko and Ichiko glared back, bemused, then the brains switched on again and they shifted, scanning the passageway ahead.

‘Check the cells, see if she’s here.’

‘At the end,’ came a shout from down the slope, ‘in the empress suite.’

Reiko rushed ahead, shouting Miso, is that you, while Ichiko crouched down and took the keys from the guard’s belt.

‘Was wondering when you were gonna turn up,’ Misora said, holding up her wounded hand.

‘Are you waving at me?’

‘No, it’s a wound. Acid burn. From the guard I assume you just killed.’

Reiko squinted through the bars, then nodded when she saw a dark yellow patch on Misora’s skin.

‘Where are the others?’

Right on cue, Ichiko appeared out of the shadows, dagger in one hand, cell keys in the other.

‘Wait…there is only one guard on duty here, right?’ asked Reiko, looking back down the passageway and seeing nothing except for Kanae wiping more blood off her face.

‘At the moment, yes. All the others are out looking for the escapees…who have a demon fox with them now. And a girl who…I don’t know what she did exactly, or how, but she got in here, and helped them get out.’

‘And left you here, unharmed,’ finished Ichiko, putting the tip of the dagger against one of the cell bars.

‘Bleeding heart moralists…the girl and the boy. Without them, the ashigaru would’ve gutted me.’

‘They saved you?’

Misora rattled her wooden restraints. ‘We don’t have time for this. The Suwa are already out there looking for them, and our targets…could be halfway round the other side of the lake by now.’

‘Not with all the security around,’ said Reiko, taking the keys off Ichiko and ignoring the cold stare back. ‘Assuming they went out the back gate, they’ll have to zig zag a lot to get down to the water.’

‘You know a faster way down there?’

‘Not exactly. But I know how to avoid the slowest.’

Misora answered with a head jab towards the cell door, and then let Reiko pull her up to her feet even though her legs were fine.

‘Acid? asked Ichiko, taking out a smaller key and, after a brief moment of hesitation, removing the wooden block around her comrade’s wrists.

‘Dished out by a deranged demon.’

‘What?’

‘The Suwa General. Lord Jun Something.’

‘Lord Jun’ya.’

‘Yeah, him. Blindingly blue eyes. Blue-stained mouth. Blue a lot of things. Or azure, technically. Psychotic demon.’ She kicked the wooden block back into the cell and rushed ahead, shouting back, ‘I’ll tell you the rest when we’re safely outside.’

‘Another demon…’ muttered Reiko, dropping the cell keys on the floor.

‘Trouble-makers,’ said Ichiko, louder, slipping the dagger back inside the depths of her prostitute’s yukata.