Setsura slowly turned around. The remaining four came at him through the driving rain. At the fore was the middle-aged woman, a pair of scissors in one hand. Behind her was the teenage boy and the SDF rangers. No matter how well Setsura had hid his presence from them, the Master had still taken notice.
Their faces were suffused with joy. The woman charged at him, the scissors held aloft like a rampaging psycho killer.
Her wide eyes grew wider at the sight of the carving knife protruding from between her heaving breasts. At first, the sight seemed to puzzle her. More than half of the carving knife jutted out her back. Gushing blood, she toppled over.
The teenager—he was maybe nineteen—jumped at him, swinging the pipe at his head too fast to dodge out of the way. It connected with a dull thud.
Though this was not the sound of steel striking a skull. The pipe sunk instead into the shoulder of the now-ashen woman. Setsura had hauled her to her feet before the teenager could react. The teenager slammed against her back. The blade of the carving knife plunged into his heart.
Leaving them skewered together, Setsura leapt backwards. Seeing that he had no cover, the SDF rangers smirked. The two muzzles spat out a fiery hail of bullets at seven hundred rounds a minute.
Flesh flew like popped balloons. The rain ran red—with the blood of the lady and the teenager. The two corpses had absorbed the twin volleys.
Either due to the impact of the bullets, or manipulated by an outside force, they spun around to face the two men.
The ranger on the right gurgled as the carving knife unleashed by the centrifugal force of rotation embedded itself in his neck. Pressing his left hand against the wound, firing the Model 89 with his right, the ranger keeled over.
His abrupt demise interrupted his partner’s attack. Setsura swung in an arc to the left, moving so fast through the dark silver torrents pouring down that his figure blurred like a smear of India ink.
The surviving ranger aimed his gun. The muzzle roared—just as his partner popped up in front of him like a dancing marionette. The marionette tried to level his gun and was torn to pieces like a rag doll.
The ranger must have been an expert at close-quarters combat, for as his partner bobbed back up again, instead of making the same mistake twice he beat a fast retreat, ducking behind the cedar tree just as a flash of silver light pierced the trunk.
Barely maintaining a human form, the gunned-down ranger had grabbed the knife out of his throat and hurled it at him. The dead man’s strength so exceeded that of the living that the blade sank halfway through the sturdy wood.
“It’s been a while since I’ve played with knives,” Setsura mused. “I’m a little slow on the draw.”
He waved his right hand, spun on his heels, and set off in the direction where that pained moan had first come from. The report of a gun didn’t echo from the cover of the cedar. The moan came from a gray figure, her hands fastened around her neck, cloaked in the haze of rain.
The girl who’d thrown the knife at him.
Her white blouse clung to her skin, throwing the lines of her pubescent body into strong relief. She was wearing a jeans skirt. Setsura gazed at her young pained face. Her neck and shoulders were grimy, but her face was smooth and comely, the result of some care and grooming.
There had to be a few makeup rooms in a television studio.
“Sorry I took so long with the knife,” Setsura said impassively. He might as well have been a beautiful computerized answering machine. “Those who bare their fangs to me rarely live long, but you have suffered enough. Besides, a guide may well come in handy. Or would the one of you be better off as two?”
Grasping the grave implications of the question, the girl shook her head. Quite unaware, she’d gained the latitude to move her head that much.
Every last trace of the pain that promised to literally split her in two vanished. The girl gazed dumbfounded up at Setsura. More than the fear and loathing, surprise and desire colored her eyes. From the moment she set eyes on him, the pain vanished from around her throat.
He pointed at a spot on the ground a few yards off, though her eyes remained glued to his face. “Stamp your feet there. The cedar tree will feel the reverberations most keenly.”
She finally turned her attention to the place Setsura had indicated and clumsily moved over to it. Staring at the cedar, she softly raised her sandaled right foot and brought it down.
The shape of the tree abruptly shifted. At three feet above the ground the trunk slid apart, the upper part listing to her left. The girl looked on with wide eyes. Something had sliced through the tree.
Stranger still, the canopy of the tree, its branches reaching out, didn’t fall over. The trunk slid sideways at an angle, as if down an icy ramp, and dropped vertically, embedding itself into the wet ground.
A second later, from the other side of the stump a mist of blood filled the air. The girl well knew whose from the torso that tumbled onto the ground.
“Shall we go?” Setsura said, and turned around.
The girl cast her moist eyes after him and hurried to catch up. The two set off together.
“Where is the Master?”
“I don’t know.”
“We first need to dry off. Where would be best?”
“I’ll show you.”
The odd conversation between these two foes faded away and they passed back through the exit doors. Then, only the sound of the rain disturbed the silence of the dead, showing no regard for their souls.