AA231 - Beat these Bodies (Patreon)

James summoned his armour and then folded his umbrella. He didn’t need it anymore; the rain bounced off whatever it was made of, not even leaving a smudge. The Georgians looked at him enviously before tossing theirs away. Mitsue just looked stoic as he folded his and, like James, gave it to Suki for safekeeping.

The ambush site was on a residential street. It was lined with two-story houses with high front walls and very small gardens. Just big enough for one of the big grey guys to hide in, if they crouched down. Harue had assured them that the residents had all been cleared out.

“People are still huddling in their houses, but not these houses,” she clarified. “Mostly, they’ve evacuated to shelters and community shelters, but the JSDF is still doing sweeps for stragglers.”

“Are they going to be alright?” Suki asked.

Harue shrugged. “I’ve been texting their locations to emergency services as I go.”

“Wait, you still have signal?” Arjun asked. “How?”

Harue held up her phone and smirked. “Literal magic, big guy.”

Arjun gave an annoyed grunt. “Convenient for some.”

“You know it! Anyway, they’ve got one group blocking the street, then a grey guy on either side, hiding. I’m guessing they’re gonna try and catch you in a pincer.”

Approaching the site, James could see the goblins clustering around what he was starting to think of as a troll. He hoped he wasn’t appropriating the name from some Earth species.

“The flankers should be—” Arjun started to say.

“I see them,” Shion said shortly. “There… and there.”

She pointed at two blank walls.

“How?” Arjun asked.

“Heat signatures, dummy,” Shion said. “I’ll take care of that one.”

“Wait, we—” Arjun stopped because Shion was already gone. Moving like a rocket, she crashed through the wall. Arjun cursed.

“Back her up,” he told James. “We’ll take the other one.” He ran towards the spot Shion had indicated, unlimbering his sword-belt. It was the first time he’d done so, and James was interested in how the whole thing… worked, but he turned away and ran towards the screams of rage that were Shion’s fight.

James wasn’t sure which screams belonged to whom. Both combatants seemed consumed with rage. Shion’s heat-sink wings were out, and she was moving much faster than the grey-skinned monster.  But his armour and thick skin were shrugging off her fists.

By the time James arrived, she must have hit the creature a dozen times, but it didn’t appear injured. It swung its sword awkwardly, trapped by the tight space behind the wall and with poor footing from all the rubble. That space was starting to open up, though, as every swing took a chunk out of whatever got in its way.

“Coming through!” James called as he came in. He led with an overhead kirioroshi, which the monster parried. James suddenly realised that, for the first time, he was up against a sword that was longer and wider than his own ridiculously shaped sword.

That was if you didn’t count Frame weapons, and James didn’t. They were for machines twice the size of a human, and this monster… wasn’t quite that. It did tower over James by about two feet, though.

James swung again. This time, he pushed the… aura or whatever it was that made the blade cut. He was parried again, but this time he took a notch out of his enemy’s blade.

The monster’s eyes narrowed, and he snarled something in a language James didn’t understand.

“No idea,” James shot back, “But you sure are ugly, aren’t you?”

The monster looked like he might be going to reply, but Shion took that moment to re-enter the fight.

She was fast and furious, but she was so small compared to the enemy. She went for a kick this time, flying in to strike at the side of its knee.

It didn’t break, but it did buckle. The leg bent with the force of the blow, and the monster’s footing, already compromised, wasn’t good enough to keep it upright.

“Bigger they are—” Shion started, but the monster was down, not out. It was already whipping its sword around as it fell, and Shion was forced to jump back to avoid it. James was shocked by the speed of its reflexes and by how fast it could move that blade.

But he was faster. His glowing green sword cut a line through metal armour and the flesh of the giant’s arm. The monster howled in pain.

Blue blood, huh.

The errant thought was all he had time for, as the monster was already rolling to his feet, sword continuing to swing in a deadly arc. Shion snarled, jumping over the sword, high enough to kick at the creature’s head.

What did she—oh.

Belatedly, it occurred to James that he could probably jump that high. He still wasn’t used to the extra strength the armour gave him.

Rolling to its feet had put the monster out in the street, now. It had more room to swing its sword and better footing. Shion had more room to dodge as well, but she needed it to avoid its faster swings.

James had to get back into it. A quick look around showed that Arjun and Katarzyna were still dealing with their grey giant. Arjun was whipping his blades around in furious arcs, creating a zone of exclusion that nothing could enter. The blades were moving so fast that James couldn’t even see them, just the spurts of blue blood from the hapless monster.

Katarzyna was steering well clear of Arjun’s blades, attacking the grey giant from the other side and using the full extension of her polearm. There was something odd about the way she fought, but James couldn’t pick it out from a quick glance.

In the middle of the street, Kana was facing off against the main force charging up the street. Lightning flashed and crackled as she directed it through the remains of her umbrella. The metal ribs scattered the energy, causing a wide swathe of destruction.

A terrifying howl rang out in the distance. Or… more than one? It was hard to tell. It did sound like they were getting closer.

James returned to his fight. The monster was wary of him now, making sure to keep its giant sword ready to block him. That meant accepting a few blows from Shion, but for all the times she’d landed a punch or a kick, she had yet to draw blood. James had.

James pushed power into his blade, looking to overcome the defence in front of him. He forced the creature onto the defensive, raining down strikes that had to be parried, leaving more openings for Shion.

“Damn punching bag!” Shion yelled in frustration after leaving a dent in the monster's back plate.

“This isn’t working!” James yelled back. “I can hurt it if you distract it!”

James didn’t know the words that Shion spat back at them. He assumed from the venom in her voice that she was rejecting his idea. So he was shocked when she jumped up and latched onto the giant’s head.

Not a strike, or even a proper grapple. She just wrapped her arms and legs around her target. James might have assumed that she was trying to choke it, but the monster didn’t have a neck.

Surprise almost made him hesitate, which would have been a disaster. The giant didn’t like what was happening and instinctively reached up to grab Shion. Pulling her off or tearing her in two—James didn’t know what the monster intended and didn’t want to find out.

Raising its arms meant it was vulnerable. There was only a second to take advantage with a fast yoko-giri, a horizontal cut across the body with all the power that James could force into it.

The monster screamed as James cut a line across its belly, cutting through the armour and opening up a massive wound. There must have been an enchantment in the breastplate because the sword sparked up and a circle of fire glowed red-hot over the giant’s heart. The armour shattered, and the monster fell back.

Shion jumped off before it hit the ground and was kicking it in the head before James could recover. From the lack of reaction, James was sure she was kicking a corpse.

“More coming,” he said quickly, and readied to face the charge. Kana’s lightning had dropped half a dozen of the goblins, but it had only angered the axe-wielding grey giant.

There were more howls now, and they were definitely closer.

Shion snarled her defiance at the oncoming horde.

“Too tough for punching? Guess I’ll pick up a weapon,” she growled. She pried the giant sword out of the fallen monster’s hand. It looked… incongruous. James knew she was strong enough to use it, but the sword looked almost as big as she was.

There was no time to discuss it. James ran forward to join Kana. She glanced at him as he approached, then, to his surprise, took a step back and let him take the lead.

“I have important roles to play as the centre,” she explained to his shocked look. “You must hold the front line.”

Before James could respond, Shion shot past him with a sudden burst of speed, caroming into the giant in the lead. She held her new sword like a bunting baseball player and just ploughed into the creature.

Despite the disparity in size, James thought that she would knock the monster over. But it somehow managed to brace itself against her charge. It carried a full-sized shield that looked like a buckler on its massive arm and managed to get that in front of Shion.

She bounced off. It wasn’t all bad; she went flying off at an angle and crashed into three charging goblins. They all went down in a heap.

“I guess that’s the front line now,” James said and ran forward. There was no sign of Mitsue and Amilie. He wondered where they’d gone. For that matter, where was Harue? She’d gone invisible, sure, but she’d never waited this long to start causing chaos.

He didn’t have time to worry about it; his sword was already clashing against the monster’s axe. James’s training had not actually included facing off against weapons other than swords. He felt the lack very quickly.

Instead of simply blocking his sword, the monster somehow caught the weapon under the curve of his axeblade. James tried to pull the sword away, only to find that it was trapped between the shaft and the moon-shaped blade. Worse, his sword was being pulled—not out of his grip, he was holding on too tightly for that—but out of position.

Caught outside of his training, James froze, trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. But half a second was a lifetime in combat. With his blade dragged out of the way, caught off balance, and frozen in shock, James was helpless as the monster suddenly reversed the path of his axe and thrust it directly at James’s face.

Time seemed to slow down for James as he noted the sharp points of the twin crescents and the spike on the end of the shaft. There was no doubt that the weapon had been designed for exactly this manoeuvre.

My armour can take this, I’m not going to die—

The axe stopped, dead.

Katarzyna’s polearm had stopped it. Not blocked it, she had extended it over James’s shoulder with every bit as much precision as a fencer and touched the axe. Now it was frozen in mid-air. James could see the monster tugging on it to no avail. He didn’t know which of them was more surprised.

“Step left,” Katarzyna commanded, and James obeyed, his mind still reeling. As soon as he did so, the grip of the axe loosened, and he was able to free his sword. A moment later, the axe was suddenly free to move again. The monster pulled it away from them and took a step back, eyeing them warily.

“Do you get how it works?” Katarzyna asked, not taking her eyes off the enemy. “Anything I touch with Morana freezes for just a second, if I want it to. Frozen objects are invulnerable for that second.”

James was dimly aware of an approaching goblin getting fried by Kana’s lightning to his right. Shion was still tussling with her goblin pile on his left.

“You can— That’s—” he stuttered, trying to come to terms with it.

“Practically cheating, I know.” Katarzyna lunged forward. The giant tried to dodge backwards, but the extraordinary reach of her weapon made that a losing proposition. It tried to catch her polearm with its axe, but she deftly twirled it around its frantic parry and brought her blade down on its heavy vambrace.

The monster’s arm froze, trapped by his own armour. Katarzyna’s weapon bounced up, then came down again.

The monster screamed as she took his hand off at the wrist. His axe clattered to the ground, and blue blood started to spray.

“Incoming!” Harue yelled.

What?

He looked over to where the shouting was coming from. He couldn’t see Harue, but—

What?

Two wolves jumped over the row of houses. That wasn’t—right? There was…

It wasn’t until the wolves landed that James realised he had scaled them wrong. They were big wolves, as evidenced by the fact that Amilie was attached to one. Her spear was lodged in the wolf’s shoulder and she was being dragged along.

She didn’t come up to the wolf’s shoulder.

It was hard to make out, but James could see Mitsue’s black-clad form pressed against the back of the other wolf. He was trying to choke it, with not much success. The four-foot chain he carried barely made it around the wolf’s neck.

Amilie’s wolf spun as soon as it landed, trying to bite its tormentor. Amilie only survived because the spear kept it from getting close.

Kana discharged her lightning into the air, at a target James couldn’t see.

Another wolf jumped over the houses. The screams from behind him were suddenly cut off.

“Those are big wolves,” Katarzyna said, joining him in staring at the new arrivals.

A golden streak shot out of the rain-soaked sky. It smashed down on the third wolf’s head, bringing it to the ground with the loudest and deepest yelp that James had ever heard.

“Tada!” Harue called. She posed on top of the wolf’s head, resplendent in her golden armour. “How’s that for an entrance?”

“Stop grandstanding and kill it!” James shouted. “Are there any more coming?”

He ran towards Mitsue’s wolf, which was trying to remove the annoying tick from its back. As James got closer, it decided to roll on its back, trying to crush Mitsue with a side order of clawing and biting at James.

“Probably! We seem to have attracted attention!” Harue yelled back. “I think this is all for the next five minutes or so, though.”

Just before he would be crushed, Mitsue detached himself from the wolf and used the momentum from its roll to fling himself clear. He landed on his feet next to James.

“I don’t think choking is going to work on it,” Mitsue admitted.

“Can you distract it? My bigger cuts take more time to build up.”

Mitsue nodded and flicked one arm in the wolf’s direction. Two shiny silver shuriken flew, aimed directly at the wolf’s eyes.

The wolf blinked, catching the darts in its eyelashes.

Mitsue sighed. “Not as easily as I’d hoped, but yes.”

He drew his water blades and started moving to the side. The wolf rolled to its feet, trying to focus on both of them as they moved apart.

James concentrated on powering up his weapon. The green glow attracted the wolf’s attention, but that just meant that Mitsue got to attack first. As soon as the wolf looked away, Mitsue extended his blades and lashed at the monster’s head. The magical blades curved around, slashing at the wolf’s face even though it was turned away.

James was hoping that the blades would reach the wolf’s eyes, but it jerked its head at the last moment and caught the blow on its muzzle. Snarling, it whipped its head around to glare with undamaged eyes at the ninja who had hurt it.

Which meant that Mitsue had managed to distract it after all. James centred himself with a deep breath and focused on pushing power into his blade again. It came a little easier this time. He didn’t need that much extra length, just a deeper—

Cut.

A line of fire burned across the neck of the wolf. For a moment, James thought he’d fallen short. He’d felt no resistance at all as he moved the blade. But the snarls were cut off, and a moment later, the blood started to spray.

James and Mitsue both sighed in relief as the monster slumped to the ground. Then they spun, remembering that there were two others.

Harue was choking hers, more successfully than Mitsue had managed. Her longer chain had wrapped itself around the wolf’s neck, and Harue was standing on its back, hauling on the chain like a fisherman pulling in his net. The wolf was trying to dislodge her, but Harue was only selectively affected by gravity. When her footing removed itself, she stayed perched in mid-air, still pulling on her chain.

Shion was in front of the choking beast, laying into it with wild swings of her stolen sword. She was landing blows on the front legs, drawing blood, but the wolf had correctly judged that the greatest danger to its life was the chain around its neck.

Amilie had been joined by Katarzyna, giving James a look at what disciplined and coordinated teamwork looked like. They held the beast at bay with their long weapons, bleeding it with a hundred small cuts.

It only enraged the beast. Without warning, it suddenly lunged at Amilie. Ignoring her spear, it charged right at her, jaws slavering.

What happened next was so fast that James barely took it in. Katarzyna twitched her polearm to one side, lightly touching Amilie’s weapon.

The spear froze in place, pointing at the charging wolf. It must have thought it could brush the spear aside, but for just that second, it was immobile. The wolf was not. The spear impaled itself four feet deep into its chest.

James heard a thump from one side, where Harue had finished choking her wolf.

“This has been fun and all,” she said, leaping down from its back. “But we’ve gotta get out of here, unless we want to fight the entire army.”

“We don’t,” James told Kana, who was just opening her mouth. “Let’s go.”