Rat

She hadn't really wanted to wake up. In fact, she hadn't really intended to move from that spot.
It was odd, having been kissed now. Kissed like she had been. Like she meant something. Like she was valuable.

Stranger still was that in this new world away from home she had choices. Sammy, Ka, and then of course Rath. She'd even had the luxury of getting to pick who she wanted and having it play out. It could have gone further, maybe it even should have, but it didn't.

Had her body been prepared? Absolutely. Like never before.
But, the rest of her wasn't quite so ready. Especially given she didn't have any of that root. Rapture's Blessing as they called it. She definitely couldn't do with having a child anytime soon.

It didn't stop her from thinking of things during her trip. The short trip. From the town of Lost Gardens all the way out to the countryside. Out into the deeper woods. Out to a different road. A longer short trip than she'd intended.

All the way out to Daigo's grave.

She sat down just before it and bowed her head. She still remembered the patrons. Sayadashi, Yaida, and Batsuno. The Blade, The Bow, and The Brave. She remembered he revered Sayadashi the Blade the most. Practicing the kenjutsu styles of the ancient warriors on a daily basis. Imei delivered her gift and offering, burning incense and offering prayers over a whetstone that had sharpened a sword to perfection. This was a one-time offering so she did not leave food to go unattended and possibly gather yokai to the area. It was the last time she'd visit the makeshift grave.

Imei moved on, knowing better than to be out of her armor while about in the woods this far from town. She decided to check the road, just in case. Bandits frequented the area, and she was determined to catch some in the act and stop them.

More walking, and her mind wandered more than her feet.

In truth, there hadn't really been anything close to a sexual encounter with the warrior, but it was as close as Imei had ever gotten. Hands. Lips. Emotive, fervent breathing. Her skin broke out in goosebumps thinking about it. Stop. She remembered his eyes in the dark, the feeling of her breasts rising and meeting an unyielding chest. It was these thoughts that she had to banish when she saw a man.

He was red-eyed, bloody, half-naked and staggering out of the trees. Immediately he locked his eyes on her. There was a handaxe gripped tightly in his right hand, the other balled into a fist. The man was drooling blood and saliva, a snarl curled on his lips before he screamed and charged. Imei raised her bow. She knew wat this was.

What she did not know was that this man, this slobbering fool had seen her once before. He'd spotted her leaping from the wagon ahead of his when she'd robbed "The Boys" bandits and bailed into the trees. He'd taken a shot at her, yelled, gave chase, but never came close to catching the woman. Instead, he made it to town with what was less of their group, drinking heavily, slurring his words, and damning this woman in purple armor that shifted with the color of the surroundings.

The people who overheard this mostly overlooked him. Overlooked his story. Dismissed them as drunk ramblings. They would pass. The few who did not, however, were interested. Deeply so. They poured him more drink, brought him women, coaxed out his story lovingly. It was too late when he noticed the hunger in their eyes at his details, the locations, and the make of that woman in armor. It was too late when he realized the women on each of his arms had stopped rubbing his chest, had stopped giggling at his jokes, had altogether stopped. It was too late when he noticed how still the air was. How they were no longer in the tavern. How sharp the knives these people held were.

Faces like masks opened to reveal dark hollow mouths. The words invaded him, sank deep like invisible daggers into his mind. He wanted to scream. He wanted to want to scream, but his will was broken. His mind forever altered. His resistance to magic, beaten. Like boulder on a precipice overlooking the enemy forces, the people with their faces like masks pointed him in a direction and pushed.

Scatter the ranks. Kill what is left.

Imei let her arrow fly and it stuck the man deep in the chest stopping him cold. He dropped, and just before his knees hit the dirt, Imei focused her Nin to its peak.

The man exploded.

His bones sailed like shards of brittle glass, the caltrops in his stomach whizzing by. Fire. Force. The gory end to the bandit ruptured the air like a thunderclap and sent Imei sailing backward to roll to a stop. If not for that ki technique, she knew that shockwave would have killed her.

She got up as fast as she could, but a sword flashed out of the darker edges of her vision striking her with deadly force on the side of the head. She staggered into a tree, the armor having protected her from the blow.

Imei knew what this was.

Kuroikazuchi. Black Lightning.

A group of four Kyudo at once, all after one target.

She pushed off of the tree and felt a boot slam straight into the small of her back sending her down to her knees. Catching herself on her hands but still reeling, Imei knew there was no time. A blade was already on its way to take her head. She reached back with both arms, covering her neck and letting her gauntlets absorb the sword strike that would have otherwise beheaded her.
Bow still in her hands, Imei rolled forward, notching an arrow mid-tumble and landed facing back at her two attackers. They had started moving opposite directions. The one to her left disappeared behind the tree she'd smashed into, the one on the right stayed in view and she fired on him.

The earth in front of him came alive, massive stones exploding out of the ground covered in dirt, vines, and leaves. it stood as tall as two of her, large rough boulders at the ends of its fists with a featureless stone head. The two arrows bounced off with sharp Tck! sounds, and the earth golem lunged at her like a pouncing cat. Imei sprang to the side rolling out of the way of the monster's landing then ducked lower to the ground to avoid a backswing of its hand. It raised both fists prepared to slam them down on her and she dashed between its legs just as the blow shook the ground.

Imei was instantly surrounded by gas hearing two ceramic balls break near her. She snapped her mask over her face and could hear them, surface thoughts skimmed by the magic of the mask. Circle behind. Corner her with the golem and ignite the gas. The golem was turning around and Imei charged it leaping and striking the back of the stone knee joint with both feet hardened by Nin. The creature half-buckled and Imei used her Chikyu to stick to it running along its back as it straightened. While she moved she wrapped and arrow in thin cloth gauze and dumped a small lamp pot of oil over it while she stood on the golem's shoulder. It swung at her and she jumped away, out towards it front, notching the oiled arrow and releasing it mid-leap. It glanced the golem's shoulder just as it struck itself up top and staggered to the side. The scrape of the metal arrowhead lit the cloth and the oil and the gas.

The flash was blinding, the bang deafening, and yet Imei simply charged away from the heat and smoke. The thoughts came in jumbled, but there was one loud, near her. To her right. There! Imei gave a tree ahead a wide distance and out came another Kasagari, this one was a taijutsu master, she could tell by his garb. Solid black but with thin red strips of cloth up the length of his forearms and dark red bindings on his shin guards.

She saw his arm flicker lick it had faded out of existence for just a moment and even while she was comprehending that, Imei realized her vision was too slow to register that her whole head had turned and she was falling. Her mask had gone flying off into the woods and she barely managed to shoulder roll to catch herself and face her opponent. Imei was just in time to block a kick aimed at her rising chin with both hands. It had enough force to lift her to her feet. Both his hands flashed out again, but this time she was with him, wholly focused and dodging on instinct letting one pass over her right shoulder, the other slipping over her left. She struck out with her own attacks, one quick punch and immediately she knew it was a mistake. His thirst strike hit her square in the nose. Imei felt it break under her mask, unable to take two blows like that. She stumbled, feeling another fist slam into her chest and steal her breath, and a kick whipped against the side of her body sending her sprawling across the forest floor. She had felt a familiar kind of scraping against her body with each hit. His blades, his heels, his toes. All bladed.

When the kunoichi stood again trying to reset her ki and delay that happening again...it happened again. The same combination. She knew he would punish any mistake she made with that same serious of blows until his blades got through her armor. There she would have to stave off poison and heavy bleeding. There she would die less than a mile from her first kill.

Imei had seen it before, the Chinmokubushi, training and getting that treatment. Maybe she wasn't fighting a master, but a prodigy. Using what he'd seen his betters do, but not knowing exactly how to simply finish one of those combinations by breaking her neck, or planting that final powerful kick into her spine or crush the ribs near her heart. He was too fast for her to stop the entire flurry once he started, but she could predict that first punch, the one that had her nose bleeding fountains into her mouth right now.

Getting up again, Imei staggered her final step in gaining her footing slightly then held up a hand and closed her eyes. Nin hardened her hand as she was certain it hardened the Chinmoku, but the difference was that she was holding a flash bomb with her eyes closed and he wasn't.

Blinded, the Chinmoku couldn't help his surprised reaction. He delayed his follow-up punch and missed Imei completely. She was inside of it, too close too far to his left and she grabbed his wrist tugging him along the path of his own swing. He whipped around her body and was flung through the air rolling when he hit the ground and standing just in time to get an arrow to the chest. It thumped hard like a stone and he shrugged it off. His Nin was incredible. Imei was no fool though and had not stopped firing. Two arrows next. One hit his chest, the other hit the stomach, he was pushed back again. One arrow, a powerful one. Ki reinforced collided with his solar plexus while he was blind still. It would have, but his hand flashed out and he knocked it away. At the same time, traveling with the silence of a shadow another caught him clean in the face and he fell back. Despite not being skewered, his body was likely in tatters under his garb. Powerful Nin or no, they were less than fifteen feet apart and her bow was like a flash of lightning. One down. She might yet live.

Imei moved into the trees again, peeking over at where the explosion had been. The golem was beginning to stand, one shoulder on fire where the oil had spilled on it but it was in four pieces, one of the other two was staggering to his feet, the other sending an arrow flying in her direction. Imei ducked behind the tree again letting it pass. That was still only three. Where was the mage? That's who she'd been trying to find with her mask. Trying to seek the mage's thoughts. The mask.

Imei looked at where it had flown darting from one tree to the other as the other two ninja closed in on her. She dropped handfuls of caltrops on the ground as she moved, spying the mask about ten feet away.

In an instant, her mind exploded with horrendous visions.
She saw Rath, the man she'd just spent one of her most peaceful moments with, laying dead on a wasted battlefield. Soldiers tramping carelessly on his body and scaring away the crows which picked at his eyes and guts.

She saw Mava, the caring Elven friend of hers frozen solid and taken apart with pickaxes by winter shadows.

She saw Ms. Jinxx and Yami bounding a circle of red light unable to move as demons with great fanged maws approached drooling with anticipation. She saw them begin to dig in. Heard screams.

She saw from her own eyes, petting Sammy's head, watching his tail wag as usual and then sliding Kumori's blade between his shoulders all the way into his heart and out of his sternum.

Ka's face began to appear in her mind, but it was here, finally, that she was aware that she was screaming, clutching her head and in tears of agony trying to fight the visions off. Still in the middle of a fight. The pressure on her head was still intense, passes of the visions dominating her mind with ever wrong breath. Her ki had to be tougher than steel, solid. Imei grit her teeth and quickly retrieve a fire trap ready to set it and move when a volley of arrows collided with her. One stuck in her hand, skewering it and sending the trap rolling away. Others bounced off of her armor leaving what she knew would be horrendous bruising in their wake. One struck her in the right hip and she felt it connect with bone. Imei screamed and fell behind a tree.

Kumori came out cutting off the back shaft of the arrow and opening the wound further to remove the arrowhead. She didn't have time to do it properly. Imei blocked the pain to the spot. No time for that either. The mage was occupied trying to shut down her mind, these two were going to move in for the kill and if she let them fight their battle their way, that was exactly what would happen.
Worse, she knew that killing one of them quickly was more important than staying protected. The Vanish Cloth's armor would only keep her safe for so long. She couldn't close her right hand and she needed to beat 3 people of arguably higher skill than her own. Imei wasn't ashamed of having to lean on the artifact she'd stolen quite a bit.

The first, the blademaster came around first and she felt a burning swath cut straight up through her stomach. Imei had every intent of reacting, but at that same time, she saw the end of Ka's scene.

Hanging over a pit of fire by his own intestines. Imei herself fired an arrow to sever them and send him tumbling into Hell.

The cut shook her from it and she grit her teeth catching the ninja's hand with her hands on the other swing and pushing them over her so there was no follow-up. At that moment she looked behind her seeing the archer and used the armor's safety feature. It teleported her behind him just as the armor which kept acting disarmed the swordsmen sending his blade sailing across the forest floor. Imei now had the drop on one of them and even with only her left hand she put Kumori through their back, through their chest, and pulled them down releasing a gout of blood and the dried husk of a scream that would follow.

She felt sick, not from the kill, but from that strike of that sword. She felt blood gushing out of the wound, she felt an unsteady pressure trying to release itself with each step. Her Nin stretched further, holding her body into one piece as she approached the ninja fighting her armor which suddenly went inert and fell down. He looked up and saw that his friend was dead before drawing two kunai and circling Imei. She was panting a little and Kumori seemed to disappear.
That is, until the ninja struck out at Imei, then the blade of Kumori was back suddenly a parry clean enough that it split the man's hand almost in half. She stepped out of range of his other swing but her bare foot hit a caltrop and she stumbled. Shit, the slippers were in the pile of armor. While Imei stumbled the man leapt at her tackling her to the ground and pushing her back onto more caltrops. Imei let out a groan of pain as it shot through her body in several different spots. The man tried to bring his kunai down on her while she reeled from the pain but she fought him, bucking her hips so he missed and stabbed the forest floor. She used her right forearm to chip at his other arm and unbalance him but couldn't roll on top. The struggle was interrupted by another vision.

Imei was seeing through her own eyes again, and this time she was surrounded. Men, all wearing masks. One was on top of her striking her face repeated. She spat out her teeth and tried to scream, a gurgle and a gout of blood came out. She realized she had no tongue. Worse yet, the man was not just attacking. She was being raped. Imei whimpered reaching up to try and fight, but he pinned her left wrist. The right one came up and she aw that at the end of the wrist there was no hand. She couldn't stop this.
The man atop her raised his fist and brought it down toward her face.

Imei caught it with her ruined right hand. She got it just in time for it not to enter her brain and kill her, but her eye was not so lucky. She really did scream this time, her left hand snapping upward to push the thumb into his eye. He jerked away and tried to grab her wrist before she could destroy the eye, but it got the kunai out of her own. He'd given her enough space to lash out again with Kumori but he blocked it with his gauntlet. Imei got one leg up and kicked him backward but he dove back down on her stabbing into her shoulder. She was slowing down and she knew it. She bit his hand before he could pul the kunai out of his shoulder, Nin locking her jaw hard enough that he went to strike with his other hand. Imei raised her knee as hard as she could into his groin. She heard the breath go out of him and pushed him over. He raised his hands but she thrust Kumori down into his stomach, stepped just below the wound and drew the blade out. An arrow hit her in the back before she could stab again. The mage. Imei staggered then lashed out in rage taking two swipes at the ninja she'd failed to finish a moment ago. One cut struck him across the face. the other got his throat. Another arrow struck her in the stomach connecting the wound in her stomach to the one on her hip. Imei nearly blacked out right then, dropping to one knee and watching the world swim around her.

More horrors. They struck so fast and so often that she lost track. Her eyes were streaming with tears, blood beginning to bubble up from her throat. She needed to start healing. Now. But it would drain her too badly to fight.

She saw the mage drop down out of a tree and begin to approach with their bow. An arrow sailed toward her but Imei moved her head and let it sail by. Another came and she caught it tossing it aside. "You're going to have to dirty your hands..." she rasped out. "...come get me."

It was not an idle challenge.

The mage was wearing one of those smiling masks Imei had seen in her nightmare a moment ago. Was that a threat this man was making? She didn't care. she still had one good fist and one damn good sword. The ninja with the smiling mask, the mage. He took one step that Imei paid very close attention to. Foot came down.

She smiled. He exploded. The fire trap had its revenge.

Imei began to heal immediately. Eye first. That was the kind of injury that would become permanent if she waited too long, Nin or no Nin. The wound in her side was next. She barely had any strength left. She needed enough to get home. She needed enough to get home and stabilize.

Grabbing the Vanish Cloth and her mask, she began the painful trek home. Killing didn't seem to be so much a problem anymore. Staying alive? That was a different story.