Don't Eat the Shiny

WARNING. SOMEWHAT GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD.

“If you’re into that sort of thing, then, sure, he’s interesting,” she shot back, the smallest of smiles pulling on her lips underneath her mask. “Compulsive smoker, feels the need to wear obnoxious armour… even though I wouldn’t mind a set like that myself, if you’re thinking of getting me a gift any time soon.”

The castle was a sight, just like the rest of the capital was – beautiful, but in the end, just a bunch of stones to be knocked over. As Mako took care of the first shinobi unfortunate enough to be in their path, she turned to Iesu, golden eyes glinting. “Do you want to deal with the Lord yourself?”

Iesu took a long drag from the cigarette before looking back to the Silver masked Taka. "Make the daughter slit his throat." He felt Shukaku rise in excitement. "Show her the carnage her father wrought due to incompetence. We will bring her into office as the new feudal lord.” He exhaled deeply, releasing a cloud of smoke mixed white shadow dust. Shukaku's blood lust ventilated throughout him as his eyes turned crystallize onyx black before looking away from the masked Taka member.

“Don’t collapse the structure until I’m out, will you?” she muttered to Mako – him, she wasn’t particularly worried about (if he did, he had enough skill to put her back together anyway), but Tailed Beasts always stood to make her uneasy. Her hands flashed outwards, forming handsigns to weave a web of concealing genjutsu around her, then to rapidly grow an identical clone, rising from the earth. Nearly invisible, Yozen ghosted into the castle, her clone generating a spore cloud of her own.

For all the advice of the Triad had cost him, it hadn’t been quite enough to keep her out.

The feudal lord’s head moved back and forth through a tiny jerky arc – normally, she would’ve drawn this out more. It was better to have a sequence. The second guy waited until the first guy died, and so on. It build up the dread, each following one just willing the previous guy to live a minute longer. However, this was purely practical, as getting stabbed in the back while trying to work was just really ******** irritating. She had killed all the guards, their throats turned into black rotting flash, and she only manhandled the Lord twice – first, for the general impression (he nearly had a heart attack when she touched him, certain black rot would spread too over his skin), then secondly to gag him and secure his hands behind his back. He followed her with accusing eyes, full of disbelief, the kind a person shows when what was assumed to be an empty threat or even a cruel joke turns out to have been deadly serious.

“We’re all going to die, Lady,” she spoke up, eyeing the daughter in front of her, as Yozen stood behind the kneeling father. “The only questions are when and how.”

“I, for one, am not dying today. You are not either. But for him,” she yanked on his hair. “There is a choice. Either you kill him now, or you do it in fifteen hours after he spends his last hours in agonizing pain. I’ll rig him on a rock, cut his stomach open and take out his intestines – and you’ll both watch. The cut does not kill him, I never sever any important blood vessels. The bleeding stops quite fast. It’s about pain and shock and infection. The strong ones resist all three. They die of hypothermia, I think. Their core temperature is compromised, obviously. It depends on the weather. My record is eighteen hours. People say they’ve seen my work last two full days, but I don’t believe them.”

“But take a gamble,” she continued, eyes fully impassive behind her silver mask, one hand disappearing in the folds of her robes near her right upper leg, pulling out a knife.

A knife. A black machined handle. An auto-opening mechanism. Practically illegal in polite company, which she wasn’t. Yozen thumbed the release and the blade snicked out, fast and hard, with a sound that was halfway between a click and a thump. A loud sound, in the silent room. And an unhappy sound. A double-edged dagger with a spear point. Four inches long. She was no kind of knife fetishist, did not have favourites, didn’t care for steel compared to jutsu. But if she had to rely on one for combat, this was preferable. The automatic mechanism, the point, the two-edged blade. Ambidextrous, good for stabbing, good for slashing either coming or going.

This day however, it wasn’t hers to use. The west could be a desperate place.

The daughter seemed to have as much of an instinct for self-preservation as any civilian, maybe more than most. Yozen stretched out her arm – the edge of the knife pointing at her own midriff, balanced on one finger, daring the noble to take it and stab her – but not today.

She could feel the noble daughter’s hands shaking as she took the knife in both hands, knuckles white from the strain with which she clutched the handle. Yozen stepped closer behind the feudal lord, put a hand in his hair and hauled his head back, baring his throat. “Do it,” she ordered.

Ear to ear. Hard work, even with a superior blade like this. She had to pull and tug and saw, and it did not come easy to her. Muscle, fat, hard flesh, ligaments. The steel scraped across bone. Weird tubercular sounds came up at the both of them out of his severed windpipe. Wheezing and gasping. There were fountains of blood as his arteries went. It pulsed and sprayed way out in front of him, drenching the daughter, even hitting the far wall. It soaked Yozen’s hand and made it slippery – mild irritation followed, her position had not been perfect enough to come home completely bloodless. She let go of his hair and the body pitched forward. His face hit the stone floor with a thump.

Yozen stepped away, breathing evenly. The daughter faced her, panting, drenched in coppery blood.


♔ ❛LOCATION hot springs under the castle xxx♔ ❛WITH mako, iesu > feudal lord and lady xxx ♔ ❛OTHER yozen's still underground at the end, do what you want -- you can either come and get her or she's coming up/out in my next post.

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The Squadfather


Luville