Chiharu ground her teeth together at his words. Her mind was clear enough to be aware of her body’s state. ‘Damn, it’s a clever tactic and I didn’t even see it coming…’ She darted her eyes around for ideas. ‘Can’t let all this end now!’

Fumiko tried to get to her feet, but found them even weaker than before. His Field sealed everything for her. However, she didn’t care. Chiharu was at risk and she needed to do something. ‘I’ve got to protect her!’ Her hands pressed against the slanted surface knocking herself over to her side. Whispered curses escaped her lips as she fought with her body to stand.

Chapter 165 – The Weakling

“Don’t really enjoy fighting children, but orders are orders. Not a lot I can do since you’re the ones attacking us.” He reached out for Chiharu, but stopped short. His eyes narrowed a bit seeing the sword in her hand aimed at him. “Your hand is shaking. I imagine the weight of that sword is too much for you.” Resuming his move, he leaned down for Chiharu once more.

The sword dropped out of Chiharu’s hand as he came closer. However, she rolled back out of the way letting her foot kick the hilt of her tanto. Weakness gave it poor aim, but it still flew past the man’s head forcing him back. She panted heavily feeling the weight of her body. Glancing up to check on her attack, she caught sight of a shallow wound on his forehead through his eyebrow. ‘Barely hit…’

Catching the signs of blood, he wiped away the slight trickle. It didn’t easily stop and slowly worked around and down his face. “Still got spirit, but that won’t be enough. That last move exhausted you.”

“Don’t speak to me like you know me!” spat Chiharu, “I’m no weakling!”

“This is true. For you have taken this long to be collapsed, you’re not weak. But the facts are still the same. You haven’t the strength to fight back.”

Chiharu fought with the ground to keep even the slightest hint of balance, but it still tossed her around. Though worse for her, the word she spoke before echoed through her mind. It did more to break her than even the ground. Her mind failed to stop herself before she finished. It tasted bitter.

‘Weakling!’

Retreating a little, the ground rolled around her knocking her on her back. She glared back at the man as he made no action to take her. He acted too casually for her, but in her state, she had few options. Chiharu rolled over letting the ground guide her away from him. It dumped her out of his sight. ‘I need a plan… I can’t let it end like this, not failing…again…’

‘Weakling!’

Sighing softly, he ignored the blood dripping. ‘Can’t keep delaying things, Bakkhos. I’ve wounded her pride enough, just want to wrap this up.’ Bakkhos stepped forward, paving the ground in search of Chiharu’s body. The last place he found her came up empty. “Hmm…” he muttered with his eyes narrowing. He preferred not to doubt his eyes.

His foot turned, rotating him around his Field. “You can’t disappear from me. The more you move the more remaining energy you drain.” No response came back to him. ‘So she’s stopped replying. She baited pretty easily.’ Taking a moment to think, he stopped moving. Nothing came to him other than the other woman he had to capture.

Bakkhos marched over to Fumiko, finding her easily. However, he found no presence of the other. He hoped to find them together somehow evading him, but it didn’t work. ‘Where’d she go?’

The nothingness concerned him. He searched around again for her, but his Field made it difficult to see clearly. ‘Well she’s already weak so that instability isn’t an issue anymore.’ A ripple escaped his feet and flattened out the ground.

Once the Field smoothed out, his eyes widened in shock. He turned around quickly trying to keep everything in his view. It still came out the same. Nothing was truly nothing. Only Fumiko remained in sight. ‘What did she do?! She couldn’t have fled that quickly!’ He glanced back at Fumiko. “What’s your friend up to?”

Fumiko managed a weak grin for him. “I don’t know, but it looks like your fight isn’t over yet.”

“What can the two of you do?” he remarked. From anyone else, it would have sounded arrogant, but his casual almost carefree tone made it seem like he spoke to friends. “My Field’s taken away any strength you have to challenge me. Just come peacefully and it won’t be any harder at your hearing.”

“I doubt we’ll live long enough to see that if we’re captured.”

“What do you mean? You’ve caused us some trouble, but we still send back all foreigners.”

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“You’re hunting our friend to kill him. We’ll just be loose ends.”

Bakkhos took a step back from Fumiko. He preferred to think of her over exaggerating the truth of their search, but he couldn’t find it in her eyes. ‘She believes what she’s saying… What part of the picture am I not seeing?’ His fight suddenly became something less important. Leaning down and coming to one knee, he stared directly at Fumiko. He narrowed his eyes, piercing into Fumiko to read everything she said. “I’ve heard no orders to kill anyone. Only capture.”

Their proximity unnerved Fumiko a little. She preferred not to be so close to their enemy, even if he hardly acted like one. “I’m not surprised someone like you hasn’t heard about it. I doubt anyone out here has. The fact still remains that your government wants my friend dead. We won’t allow that to happen.”

Familiar blackness surrounded everything in sight. When it arrived was still unknown, but it was a welcome friend. The only friend needed.

Chiharu didn’t know when or how she slipped into shadow. ‘I couldn’t find any large enough to use or stable enough with the Field. What happened to me?’ She had been waiting for the chance to make a move, wanting to escape the power of the field, but the opportunity always was too far away. The Field created shadows, but it moved too fast on her. Moreover, her body didn’t work with her.

She tightened her hand trying to get a feel for her body. The negative effects of the man’s Field left everything in her body off balance. It made her own body feel foreign to her. She detested such foul play. ‘It might be clever, but there’s no skill or strategy in such methods.’

‘As an assassin, a ninja, there’s no room for pride in skill, our pride, honor, comes from the completion of our mission. Any method regardless of trick or deceit if it completes the mission can’t be discarded,’ echoed her grandfather’s words. He reminded her countless times of her stubbornness of wanting a straight fight. It was something that never completely sank into her.

Aging from a child to a teenager gave her clarity on his words, but she still had difficulty following them. ‘I know, but it’s not so easy. How can I lead my men if I can’t show confidence in my ability to defeat my opponent? Who follows someone that can only win through tricks?’ She knew that her men followed her orders, but how much of it was because she was the head of the family. It always spun around in her mind. She had to prove it to them. Yet every time she had a chance, she failed. She only showed them a failure. A miserable taste always filled her mouth.

Her grandfather commanded respect from everyone and fought on even with the diminished rank of their family. It never stopped him. ‘Chiharu you’ll be the head of the family one day. Always hold your head up high and never turn away. Even when you’re at your worst, never show anything but confidence in your stance. The moment you falter is the moment you lose everything.’

‘…yes, Grandfather…’

‘Even if you’re dragged through the dirt, covered in blood, beaten and bruised, never forget that you’re a Chinen. A Chinen never crumbles or collapses. Always get back up and never show weakness.’

‘…I remember…’ Chiharu pulled herself back up on her feet. Strength returned to her body. ‘…the reason I came here…the reason I must keep moving forward…’ Determination filled into all of the corners of her face running out the doubt that made home before.

‘Any method regardless of trick or deceit if it completes the mission can’t be discarded.’

‘I know…’ Reaching down, several kunai dropped into Chiharu’s hand. Trading all but one to her other hand, she lifted her arm up preparing to throw. ‘Even trickery, I must…if I’m to win…’

Fumiko’s words troubled Bakkhos. They left him silent in contemplation. His eyes read her as deeply as one could, but he found nothing inside her. She spoke the truth, as she believed it to him. ‘The council? Is that who she’s talking about? But why? Is there really something we aren’t aware of?’ Darker images conjured up in his mind from her words. He didn’t like the implications. However, he still didn’t know enough to trust her words.

Bakkhos leaned in a little more trying to exercise his position to his advantage. She was a foreigner in their land and stranger. He couldn’t trust things blindly. ‘Even a lie to an ignorant person can be spoken as the truth.’ His expression made it clear to her he wanted no tricks or skirting of the truth. “Who’s this friend? What is their importan—“

He never had a chance to finish his words as he felt a pain in his shoulder. ‘What struck me?!’ His head tilted over his shoulder in the direction of the attack. Nothing came in his sight. ‘Is it that child?’ Pausing to investigate his wound, he carefully used his good arm to pull the kunai free. Once he saw the kunai in his hand, he immediately recognized it. ‘It’s her.’

The conversation ended with him standing and the Field turning back to the unpredictable shaking. He tossed aside the kunai to focus on his pressing concern. ‘Where is she hiding? The direction had to put her…’ Bakkhos tracked the line back to where he felt she should be. The area was still a general search radius, but it put him where he felt she should be.

Another sharp pain stabbed him from the back. His other shoulder held a new kunai. He spun around quickly trying to get a lock on the girl. ‘Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Why can’t I find her?’ Bakkhos walked forward cautiously trying to get a beat on Chiharu. He suddenly felt like he was fighting a phantom rather than a child. ‘There’s definitely a different feeling to this fight than before…’

Before he had a chance to do anything more, two more kunai came from nowhere and embedded themselves into his thighs. It was enough to drop him to one knee. He ripped out of the blades and cast them aside. ‘This is becoming troublesome.’ Swiping through the air roughly, nearly a dozen blades slashed through the thick night air. ‘My shoulders are slowing me down…’

The test strike found nothing. Dust clouds coughed up from the ground from the attacks painting the borders of his field in a veil. He narrowed his eyes reading out for any movement. ‘She’s here somewhere…’

Dust suddenly parted in bursting speed trailing off a black figure. Bakkhos only had seconds to react running out cuts. Blood sprayed from new wounds, but it did nothing to halt their advance. A flying knee plunged into his chest knocking him off his feet and depositing his body several meters away.

Chiharu came to a soft landing. She stood up ignoring the bleeding from her wounds. ‘Sorry, Grandfather, but I still need to prove this to myself…before I can follow you…’

Out of the dust cloud rose the old Atlantean. Bakkhos coughed a little, feeling the impact still in his chest. His hand rubbed his trench coat that gave him protection. ‘It doesn’t work well against cutting edges, but blunt attacks…without it I doubt I’d still be standing…’ Glancing over the Field, he caught sight of Chiharu staring back at him. Her face was as clear to him as if he stood only centimeters from her. ‘She’s got her fight back. She looks even more determined than before…so troublesome…’

Lifting up her hands, Chiharu committed to a fighting stance. She felt the years of training passed down through her as part of the Chinen Clan coursing through her. It was all she needed to deal with her opponent. ‘This is as far as I’ll go with tricks. The rest of this is only me!’