“Wha-what’re we gonna do…?” Yuri asked. She had a docile look on her face. I met the eyes of my childhood friend in crisis, her spirit looked to be in shock. Stay sharp! Why do you think we sludged through a year of tough WWWA training?
“Break out the Bloody Card!” I said to Yuri. Her eyes widened and she looked at me.
“You want to help them, right? If so, then we gotta cut that big guy down.”
“Uh huh…”
Yuri gave a tiny nod as she listened to what I said, and then she pulled out a single, silver-colored, playing deck-sized card. She held the Bloody Card, a 0.6 millimeter-thick card made from Tegnoid sheet metal. It has a razor-sharp edge running along all four sides. After being thrown it can stay in the air for up to two hours, thanks to its ion drive, and its direction can be controlled by a handheld transmitter. All it does is cut, and it does it well. If it’s going fast enough it can even slice through two millimeters of KZ alloy like a hot knife through butter. It’s a simple but effective weapon.
I continued speaking.
“From here we can’t tell if there is anyone else in the room, so set it to stay at an altitude of one meter, and to fly through the entire room. Those two are on their backs, so there’s no chance of them getting hurt.”
“I got it…”
Yuri’s face looked calmer. She seemed to have returned to her normal self. I turned to Mugi.
“You stand guard. If someone comes, don’t hold back. Tear them to pieces!”
“Garurururu…” Mugi replied and bowed his head a little. It’s not the fun part, but that’s the way it is, was the impression I got from his response. He’s hot-blooded, and likes the action…
My gaze returned to what lay beyond the crack in the doorway.
In the meantime the dark-skinned guy had pulled out a ray gun. He aimed it at Thunder’s head. Dammit! He was about to kill him!
“Throw it!”
Timing wasn’t an issue. You just had to get the Bloody Card moving. With a snap of the wrist Yuri sent the Bloody Card whirling into the room. At the same time, Mugi swung the door all the way open. Yuri and I slid in together and in one quick move dove to the center of the room.
“Gurgg!”
“Kyaa!”
From above our heads we could hear a smattering of horrendous shouts. Blood rained down from above, painting the room a deep red. The casino security guard was still upright, but there was nothing but an empty space above his neck. This must be because he squatted down to get a better shot at Thunder.
The Bloody Card also sliced through another three men. Each of their bodies had blood-soaked areas around their mid-sections. One had been penetrated right through his heart. Instant death. The other two had fatal injuries that never allowed time for a counter-attack.
“Thunder!”
After recovering the Bloody Card, Yuri rushed to Thunder’s side. Wha-wha-what was she doing?! Suddenly she’s working solo, huh? Not to be outdone, I ran over.
“Thunder!!!”
Yuri raised Thunder up in her arms. Grrr… she acted like I wasn’t even in the room. Lucha was also left lying there, but since she was a girl, I didn’t have the same motivation to help her up. She’d be fine. It was a little awkward, but I moved next to Yuri as she gazed upon Thunder’s face. Make a little space!
“Yuri…”
His blank eyes opened, and he whispered her name. Did-did he say… Yuri?! Why couldn’t he say “Kei”?! At first that put my brain in a frenzy, but then when I thought about it for a second, I realized that Thunder didn’t know my name. Hee hee.
“Thunder…!”
Yuri clasped Thunder’s hand, and moisture started welling in her eyes. Streams of passionate tears flowed down her snow-white cheeks. Normally it would be a very moving scene, but I found it annoying. I couldn’t let this go on any longer. They needed to be split up.
“We should get moving,” I said sounding really worried, but at the same time, with an unforgiving tone. “I think they know we’re here by now.”
I forcefully pulled Thunder and Yuri’s hands apart, and rubbed Thunder’s shoulder.
“Yuri, can you go help Lucha? I’ll tend to Thunder,” I said it to Yuri in the most innocently natural and oblivious way I could. Without suspicion, Yuri hurried over to check on Lucha.
I helped scoop Thunder up to his feet. This is a man, a real man. I felt it through his warm skin.
“Yuri…”
Thunder muttered again. This is no good. I couldn’t let him say it again so I whispered in his ear.
“Yuri’s not here right now. For whatever heartless reason, she went away. I’m Kei. I’ll stay with you. I am sweeter than Yuri! I am cuter than Yuri! I am more beautiful than Yuri!”
Tap tap. Someone was tapping on my back. C’mon, buzz off! I was just getting to the good stuff! As I was about to say this I turned around on one heel to be face-to-face with an angry-looking Yuri. No, not good! I started to titter nervously and Yuri shouted.
“What the hell are you saying to him? Talk about backstabbing!” Reasonably speaking, what Yuri said was true. But I put feelings ahead of reason. I wasn’t about to lose, and I wasn’t about to cry!
“Shut up—!” I responded in a piercing shout.
However, in reality, it really wasn’t the time or place for petty spats. My excuse to get next to Thunder had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We had been discovered, and could hear Mugi trading blasts with the enemy down the corridor.
“Mgyaow…!”
Chased by ray-gun blasts, Mugi bounded into the room. Mugis are amazingly advanced life forms, but still will be struck down if hit by a laser blast.
“Yuri!”
I gave her a sign with my eyes. Yuri gave me a single nod. We heaped Thunder and Lucha onto Mugi’s back. It must have been a little heavy, but without Mugi carrying the siblings, we wouldn’t be able to fight back.
We grabbed the heatgun and ray gun from our hips and pressed our backs up against the wall. We slid over to the edge of the doorway. Tep tep, the sound of walking reverberated. I could tell that whoever it was, they were coming our way. From the right. Yuri pulled out the Bloody Card one more time and got it ready. With a snap of the tips of her fingers, she sent it flying down to the righthand side of the hall.
We heard a yell. It turned into a spine-chilling scream. We had scored first blood. Yuri and I dove headfirst into the corridor, and turned left with our guns blazing. Bright, threadlike beams mixed with orange heat rays, our shots went clean through the oversized enemies. One by one the men screamed in agony before falling to the floor. They were this building’s security guards. Few things smell as awful as the stink of burning flesh.
After satisfying its own bloodlust, the Bloody Card returned. That end of the hallway looked like the back room at a butcher shop. With Thunder and Lucha still draped on his back, Mugi stepped out of the room we were in.
“To the elevator!” I shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”
In front of the elevator it looked like a German Panzer Division lined up at the French border. There must have been twenty soldiers. Lined up shoulder to shoulder they held heavy-duty laser guns aimed from the hip. They wore the security guard uniforms, but the aura about them was completely different. These weren’t security guards. It was a company of yakuza.
The troops spotted us, and began discharging their laser guns. The strong laser beams blasted through a wall. With these guns, it didn’t matter that we were thirty meters away from them. Left under these circumstances, we were done for.
“Grrrrr…”
Mugi growled. His fine twisty whiskers began to vibrate. In a blink, the brightly lit illumination panel went out. Mugi had cut the power to it. It happened so suddenly, my eyes hadn’t grown accustomed. We were completely engulfed in darkness.
“Let’s get out of here!”
With the sides of our bodies flush against the wall we ran as fast as we could. A few shots from the laser guns sliced through the black, but nowhere near where we were. We covered the distance in one burst. My eyes were adjusting to the dark. We got face down on the floor and slid ourselves several more meters. The reinforced polymer outfits we wore cut down on frictional heat. Mugi’s back was bowed, and he wasn’t moving.
As I anticipated, the powerless panel came back to life. It was just as sudden as when it went out.
“Whoa…!”
We had completely faked out the company of security guards, putting them in a panic. We were less than five meters from them. Even though there were twenty people right next to us, they were completely oblivious.
Living up to their names, Yuri had the ray gun and I used the heatgun to spew fire. There was a whirlwind of screams and bellows. Fire and laser beams flew through the air in all directions. The number of troops standing dropped each second. Ten men… five men… four men… two men…
The last man standing was charred black.
A second later Mugi ran to join us. The doors to the elevator opened. We all got on at the same time, and the elevator began to move.
“Jus’ hold on one min…” Thunder said, barely audibly.
“Jus’ hold on! We don’ wanna go down. We gotta go up. Up— on the roof, the air car we came in is up there. It can go high altitude, for short spurts. The guys here don’ know about that. We can’ leave goin’ down. We gotta go up…”
Thunder’s voice grew faint, and then completely quiet. He had lost consciousness. He had squeezed out the last of his strength to tell us. If it wasn’t for his backwoods accent, it might have actually been a moving scene.