On the outskirts of the disorganized, sprawling Camp Monog stood buildings even more ramshackle than the improvised ship hulls strung together by Annitou’s government. There was no wood or stonework here. Instead the widely spaced structures looked to be hammered together from sheets of repurposed plastic, metal, or heavy canvas fabric. The exact materials used to construct the buildings let one know at a glance how well-off the occupants were, as anything that wasn't made of wood had to be imported to the island. As Len Sosu pulled his cart up to the metal bars and barbed wire fence of his destination it was clear that the folks in charge of this compound were funded well. Not that someone like himself was that easily impressed, though!
“Delivery, my good sirs!” Len Sosu pounded on the metal gate as a powerful shout ripped out of his lungs. “This is the Fenshingiri compound isn’t it? Hello? Hello? It ain’t even sundown yet, are you guys all asleep? Answer the door or I'm going home!”
A thin metal slat slid open on the heavy iron door and a pair of agitated eyes glanced down at the blonde boy standing in front of the cart. Len Sosu shot the guy a thumbs up and a winning smile.
“Man,” he whistled in his typical cheerful cadence.“You guys are super duper pale. You should get out more.”
That earned a “tsk” from the watchman, who slammed the peephole shut and began undoing the large gate’s locks. An ear piercing shriek rattled through the air as the gate opened on its rusty hinges and allowed Len Sosu into the compound proper. The boy gave the guard a mocking bow as he passed, pulling the dangerously loaded cart behind him as if it were nothing more than a toy.
Upon pulling into where the guard directed him a veritable army of other similarly uniformed men poured out from the compounds various tents. Some began unloading the cart's cargo, while others gripped spears and swords as they faced Len Sosu as if ready to launch into an assault at the drop of a hat. “Stay here until we inventory it all. We want to make sure you didn’t steal anything.”
“That’s what I dig about you Fenshingiri types.” Len Sosu stood still and stretched his legs as the uniformed soldiers worked at untangling the ropes binding the goods. “Always vigiliant. Take your time, I get paid by the hour.”
As was becoming increasingly common that day, Len Sosu’s snide commentary was ignored and the Fenshingiri soldiers went about their business. The soldiers worked hard and fast to unravel and unpack each shipment, and each piece of cargo found itself dragged off to the surrounding tents as the work continued. Len Sosu pretended to be very interested in something caught in his teeth while the men finished up with the last of his shipment. Actually there was something caught in his teeth- all the damn fish around this island were filled with small brittle bones. He really needed to start chewing his food better.
Moving his head around to pull those bits and pieces out did let him get a good look at the rest of the compound, incidentally! Despite the hefty metal wall surrounding the Fenshingiri settlement, the interior looked like any other army camp thrown together overnight. Loose gravel paths wound around at odd angles and lead to various darkly hued tents or various sizes- nothing important to worry about, Len Sosu decided. The only location he needed to care about was where the Fenshingiri kept their loot- and to do that, he only need to wait.
Finally the moment arrived. A bright red storage trunk, held tight with several chains, was pulled from the pile. Even the Fenshingiri men seemed incensed by its appearance. Rather than having one person haul it off like the others, nearly a dozen armed guards broke from watching Len Sosu to escort it away. The ever attentive eyes of Len Sosu noticed this large gathering and his keen intellect let him know something was afoot. It also helped him detect that something was happening when the watchmen from before put a coercive grip on his shoulder and growled out in a demanding voice. “Alright, we’ve confirmed everything is in place. You need to leave now.”
“What, no tip?” Len Sosu craned his neck back and noticed that the watchmen now had several other armed and very unhappy looking friends backing him up. Maybe the Fenshingiri were straight forward folk, but they were also impossibly paranoid. Imagine, thinking that a humble delivery boy like himself posed any threat! Len Sosu diverted his attention just for a second to make sure he could tell exactly what direction the red trunk was headed for. The procession of armed guards was going into was the farthest one away, nestled in the deepest part of the compound. That meant there would be a lot of warm bodies to have to push through. The scheming Motonubu had suggested a more round-about plan to gain access, but such wiles proved much less inefficient than Len Sosu’s trusty one size fits all plan:
Punching everything in the face until the job was done!
It only took a snap of Len Sosu's elbow to land a solid chunk of his fist into the stomach of the watchman holding his shoulder. The man’s thick padding did little to stop the pure, body shattering force which exploded out of the boy's otherwise reedy looking limb. In an instant Len Sosu's first victim was hurled back, as if the man's body had merely been a pebble that the boy decided to hurl across a pond. As the man slammed into and knocked over his still shocked comrades Len Sosu planted the soles of his feet flat against the earth to absorb the blow, and slid a bit away in the opposite direction from the recoil. It was always a bit of a pain to hit so hard- a good pain, but a pain nonetheless. The Garion Cadet Academy training he had received only a few years ago had been largely worthless but at least those classes on physics seemed to pay off from time to time. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction.
Well, not quite equal. Judging from how his victim's body crumpled from the attack, Len Sosu wagered he himself had come out ahead on that exchange. Physics be damned, Len Sosu was too good to be bound by such dumb laws of nature!
A repeated series of loud gongs rumbled through the camp, accompanied by frantic but purposeful shouting as the worst fears of the soldiers became reality. Already the scrambling guards responded to Len Sosu's aggression and flooding out from their posts into the compound's open courtyard. The Fenshingiri hadn’t started panicking though. Not just yet.
“Jeeeez. Come on.” Taking deliberately slow steps forward towards where the heaviest guard presence stood Len Sosu rolled his shoulders and finally let himself relax. “Motonubu said I’d have a minute or two before the alarm...I'm not even warmed up yet!” As swords and spears and clubs and nasty looking crossbows were armed and pointed at the ready, Len Sosu glanced back towards the target tent just to commit it to memory. Sometimes in the excitement he tended to forget small details like mission objectives. But, oh, all of Motonubu's talk of artifacts and gold and dumb stuff like that was just so boring. Len Sosu didn't join the Garion military to play archaeologist.
It was for moments like this! Digging his heels in the boy rocketed forward. The blast behind his takeoff dislodged a significant chunk of gravel underfoot, like a bull plowing the earth in its wake. The wall of soldiers quickly lowered their spears to intercept the unarmed and unarmored boy. It was an admirable attempt to stop Len Sosu before he had a chance to get close. On anyone else, such basic tactics would have been good enough.
Len Sosu was just a few steps above ‘good enough’, though! The boy’s balled fist swung out in an arc like a scythe. As each pointed tip of the spears met his white-knuckled grip Len Sosu twitched his fingers like he was flicking ants. Each finely honed steel blade cracked and shattered off their shafts faster than the soldiers could understand what was happening. The rest of Len Sosu's weight smashed into the now dull ends of the spear, splintering and shattering them down the entire length as his body plowed forward. It defied any reasonable explanation, how the mere teenager's skin seemed unharmed.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
But that's just what separate the weak from the strong, the boys from the men. Len Sosu cared not for logic or reason! The only truth that mattered was the truth he made with his own two hands- or as usually ended up being the case, with two bloodstained fists.
In the next moment the shattered jaws of a half dozen men sent a rain of teeth hurtling skyward. As the men fell a clearer picture of the boy emerged. Their weapons had not harmed him- only his work shirt seemed damaged from the suicidal assault. He was clearly an Agent of some kind, although what power he possessed still could not be determined. Was it Luck? Divine intervention? Something more sinister? There simply wasn't time to consider all the options. Already the bulk of the Fenshiniri guard unit were shifting positions to try and encircle Len Sosu. This too was a contingency all soldiers had to face; Agents might possess otherworldly abilities, but in the end they were flesh and blood like everyone else. It only took a dagger to the heart to put one down.
Not that Len Sosu planned ahead far enough to care about what his enemy was doing, anyway. Motonubu had told him to be wary, that actual Fenshingiri agents might be present- but who cared! An excited grin spread on Len Sosu's face as the Fenshingiri grunts tried to assume some kind of protective formation. Without hesitation he immediately launched towards another group of targets, throwing himself right into the thick of the enemy forces once again. As the boy’s apparently impervious fists broke through another swath of steel and iron, the bloodlust of battle filled Len Sosu's veins with a fiery fury. These idiots would learn what it meant to cross paths with someone as destined for greatness as himself!
-
The harsh Jinchi sun slowly crept down out of the sky towards the horizon. The Fenshingiri camp, briefly filled with the frenzied cries of battle, now began to fall deathly quiet. The crescendo of violence tapered off as the bodies hit the earth. Eventually, agonizingly, the last man standing was put down into the soil, Len Sosu's heavy foot burying the final survivors's unfortunate skull deep into the earth.
In that surreal afterglow, surrounded by the dead, dying, and defeated, stood a smiling, blood-soaked boy in torn work clothes. None of it was Len Sosu's own blood, of course. His breathing wasn’t labored but came in and out with simple ease, as if the massacre of an entire squad of trained Fenshingiri fighters hadn’t tired him in the least. What a joy, to be as alive as this!
He did feel something, of course. Euphoria, satisfaction, a renewed sense of self worth...and a little bit hungry since he had skipped lunch. Len Sosu never lost a fight, but that didn't make his predestined victories any less sweeter. What few Fenshingiri guards remained seemed to have retreated to the isolated tents in an attempt to perhaps ambush him, or more likely, to hide from the teenager wielding some incomprehensible power. Len Sosu dropped his stance finally to wipe a bit of grime off his face. Then he snapped his wrists back, throwing the blood off his palms like a samurai cleaning their weapon. There wasn’t any fun or challenge to be had in fighting a retreating enemy, so regrettably, it was time to get on with finishing the mission.
He turned, slightly, towards the tent where the red crate had been delivered. Then he yelped like a stepped on puppy as a biting pain sunk into his lower back.
Len Sosu never wore armor anyway, unlike most Garion soldiers (and Motonubu in particular), because he never lost a fair fight. Unfortunately the crossbow bolt that just pierced his ribcage wasn't playing by the rules. Those damned Fenshingiri cowards! His stance broke and he staggered forward just for a second while he tried to process this new information, and in the next second his hands bent around to pluck the offending projectile out from his flesh. Given the position of the bolt and the fact he hadn't heard it fire, his attacker could only have been hiding in the tent directly behind him. In other words, an easy target.
Both his heels dug into the earth and his face contorted briefly with rage as his arm spun back, winding up for one hell of a pitch. He hurled the thin metal rod as a god would launch a lightning bolt, full of rage and fury and without an ounce of forethought. Len Sosu was no projectile user- his fists were the only long distance weapon he needed. So of course his throw was pathetic- the rod tossed and turned in midair quite unlike how the skilled and undetected assassin had fired it.
It also didn’t matter. Len Sosu put so much strength into his throw that the kickback buried both his heels into the soil, displacing enough earth to cause a small fissure to form behind him. The twisting, spiraling bolt collided with the fabric of the targeted tent and did nothing less than explode. The entire structure blew off its bolted down supports as if a bomb had gone off, sending the rather thick material of the tent rocketing into the air like a tissue caught in the breeze. The bolt continued its ridiculous trajectory as if it hadn't hit the tent at all, punching a hole straight through the other side and not stopping until it hit the metal fencing that surrounded the compound. When it smashed into the barrier a horrifying metal shriek cracked through the air, and the entire fence encircling the courtyard shuddered and groaned from the reverberating aftershocks of the blow.
The fence did, however, stand firm. Even Len Sosu's strength had its limits.
In those few seconds of pain Len Sosu evaluated his condition. Getting hit even once was enough to really piss him off, but as usual when he did get wounded, his body didn’t feel worse for it. Barely any blood had been released and with a practiced tightening of his muscles around where the bolt had struck, even the pain seemed to be melting away. Better to save the anger for later, once he caught the culprit. His eyes scanned around the wreckage of the tent for the signs of his attacker. Anyone doing sneak attacks like that was surely a weakling but Len Sosu wasn’t the type to let things go. He also wasn’t the type to enjoy games of cat and mouse.
“Show yourself now,” he bellowed, his young voice still managing to carry quite well all things considered, “and I'll only break your back in one place!”
A response came, but not from where Len Sosu expected. Unlike the boy's forceful utterance the voice that answered back crackled with a soft tone but venomous bite. “Who do you fight for, soldier?”
The words had not come from where Len Sosu obliterated the tent. Rather it seemed to come from multiple indeterminable places at once, from all directions around where he stood. That did not bode well. Exercising caution for once Len Sosu turned so his back faced one of the walls of the camp, which was the only reasonable location he could expect to be safe.
No fear tainted the purity of Len Sosu's words, though quite a bit of annoyance did slip in. “I swear, dude, I'm not in the mood to play games. Get lost, kid, or I'm taking your head home as a trophy.” Where was this guy? There was plenty of isolated cover dotted around the camp, but no way to move between them without being seen. Len Sosu's eyes darted around to all the potential hiding spots, fully intending to obliterate them all in a destructive game of whack a mole if he had to. Precision be damned. Hadn't Motonubu told him he could go all out on these guys anyway?
Another wisp-like response floated out from the breeze.“Are you scared?” Now it was definitely clear the voices weren’t coming from the same location, and worse yet they seemed to be getting closer. A horrible truth was becoming apparent to Len Sosu. This was the worst type of job. A nightmare that had to be faced down. As his head whipped around trying to locate this stranger, Len Sosu tried to come to terms with the horror that now confronted him.
Len Sosu, heavens forbid, would need to do the unthinkable. He took a shallow breath and swallowed. Being a soldier meant making sacrifices, and now it was his turn.
He would have turn his brain back on. The realization sent a shudder through his tense muscles. What a rotten way to end his day!