Eroge? Bad Ends? Betrayal? I’m Just Here to Suplex Monsters through Buildings.

Punching Through Walls Is Romantic (1.2)

…

Neo San Kyoto, 48th Street, at 12PM PST.

…

Hiyo’s plan of attack was to sneak through the port authority building’s various floors, kill whoever found her, find her equipment, and reach the top in a decent state to confront the big bad.

My plan was to make them come to me.

After putting some holes in the submarine, I went out of the underground garage and went through the front door.

“What the!? Who are you—urk!?”

Instead of guards in blues mimicking cop uniforms, I was confronted by generic thugs in suits with pistols and earpieces. Going through the glass front doors led me into a lobby with twelve of them. They weren’t much of a fight. I got rid of them with just some senbon through the heart or neck.

Mostly the neck, since bulletproof vests were good loot, along with the guns.

It was a testament to how ludicrously strong ‘ninjas’ are in this world that a bunch of armed gunmen didn’t stand a chance. They didn’t have ‘physical energy’ or whatever it was called coursing through them. No matter how fast they pushed their bodies or trained, they weren’t going to be faster than a neophyte.

Unless you were packing higher caliber guns like orcs and had the drop on a ninja who was exhausted, you’re not getting far.

Anyway, before the door closed behind me, the suited thugs were dead.

I grabbed a couple of wallets just in case I wouldn’t get the chance to purloin their guns, ammo, and bulletproof vests before reaching a set of elevators.

Forcing the sliding metal doors open, I put my last explosive kunai into them.

When they exploded, each car fell into the depths as flaming wrecks.

Alarms resounded, and the fire system went off.

Hm.

That might make things a bit harder for Hiyo, since she was a fire user.

But it was better to make sure people couldn’t just run away.

I sealed off two of the staircases and three of the exits in the building. The light shocks they were designed to make were discouraging for any monster but strong enough to knock people out. Maybe, with the sprinklers, they’d do a bit more damage, but I wasn’t going to bet on it.

Anyway, that one set of emergency stairs was for everyone to use, and it led straight to the lobby where I waited.

Why go through the trouble of going through a potentially booby-trapped building when I could just have everyone inside come to me?

With how fucked up this world was, loads of those booby traps would be perverse in one way or another.

I had to be considerate of my youthful virtue!

A sudden bang from the one staircase I didn’t close off drew my attention, and a deluge of thugs in black suits and earpieces came out.

While I looked down on them, standing on the roof of the lobby, a good ten meters up.

“Clear.”

“All clear.”

“The fire exit is covered by a seal.”

“Don’t touch it. Make way towards the front entrance.”

“Shit, everyone’s dead.”

Eight of the group had guns, but four had melee weapons. Faintly shimmering even in the darkness and the deluge from the sprinklers, they were undoubtedly enchanted. Given the strength of ‘ninja’ armor, it was a smart choice to have some magical weapons. Typically, though, regular people armed with those kinds of weapons just ended up being fodder taken out at a distance.

“Keep your eyes open. I want a gun on every shadow. Shoot at any movement that isn’t us.” The leader had an axe and a buckler. He evenly distributed his steps and kept his weapons at half-ready while leading from the front. “Where’s the staff?”

“They’re bringing them up and over to get to our stairwell. Security says there’s an intruder going up.” One of the lackeys reported. They made good time. The group of twelve were in two columns. Two melee fighters led from the front while two were in the middle guarding the flanks. “Maybe they blew up the elevators and went up the shaft?”

“Maybe, but don’t take risks. Eyes open.” The leader grunted, and they reached the center of the lobby. “Alright. Two guns with every melee user. Spread out and keep a back to a wall.”

A smattering of affirmatives, and they dissolved their formation to move in trios.

I unstuck from the ceiling, allowed myself to fall, and landed with both feet onto the leader’s head.

His skull held, but his spine didn’t.

A sickening crack resounded, I landed in the center of the dissolving formation, and I went to work.

The gunmen turned around quickly, tried to line up shots, and found me in the middle of their group.

The split second they hesitated to shoot with a chance of hitting their friends?

I used that to send my last dozen senbon towards two of the melee fighters in vertical clusters.

One of them received all six from forehead to crotch, while the other managed to block two aimed at his face before getting a lung, a heart, a kidney, and a stomach skewered.

The last one, who’d been beside the leader at the front, gave a yell and swung my way.

I went low, swept at his legs, and he made a short hop.

Before he could land, though, I sent myself flying with a burst of physical power coursing through my arms. I stare at him like a human lance. The distance between us was less than three paces, so I connected nearly in an instant. Both my feet shattered his ribcage through his Kevlar vest.

The first shots resounded after that, but I kicked off him towards the nearest gunman while drawing a knife.

These guys weren’t nearly as tough or reactive.

“Shoot! Shoot him!”

The first one I killed by cutting through his neck in midair, and the second I landed on and dispatched with a pommel strike straight through the temple. The sensation of cutting through a throat lingered in my hand while I sent shattered bone through brain.

“I can’t get a clear—

I went flat on the man I essentially tackled and spun him around until we both lay on our ‘sides’ on the ground. He was convulsing and shaking, eyes bloodshot and mouth chattering, as parts of his brain tried to work with innumerable shards of his own skull inside it. I brought my knees to my chest, braced my feet against his chest, and kicked him towards two of the other gunmen, and he flew at them and crashed.

“Just fucking shoot!”

Two temporarily on the ground and four left.

They spaced out a little and were basically a staggered firing line.

I grabbed the nearest dead body, one of the melee fighters, and held him up while charging the center. Shots rang out, slamming into the body with dull thuds. Before they could work around my tactic, I collided with the line.

It didn’t shake them or panic them, and I didn’t hear enough shots from their guns to know they needed to reload.

So, I switched to defense.

The Uwabimi clan’s defensive technique centered around toughening one’s skin by temporarily transforming it into scales. What kind of animal had scales that could bounce anything short of high-powered rifles? Nothing in the known animal kingdom, so I just chalked up its effectiveness to magical ninja bullshit.

Letting the technique cover me in a protective skein, I bounced the pistol bullets that struck me while charging the remaining gunmen. I couldn’t use physical enhancement while defending myself with my former clan’s scale technique, so I couldn’t just use supernatural speed to get the job done.

Being raised as a killer from birth, however, made sure I could kill them just fine.

I just needed to put more effort into making my attacks precise while putting aside all the attacks that needed supernatural strength and speed.

That would usually entail being more careful with my knife, but the man I just tackled with a corpse had a gun.

A gun in my reach.

It felt like a toy in my hand, and practically just thinking about aiming it had my hand guide it towards my target.

Think, leave the bullshit ninja instinct and training to do the work, and pull the trigger.

Three shots rang out, then two more, and the remaining human guards died with bullets through their skulls.

It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Just shooting people wasn’t at all that interesting, but I wasn’t about to take my chances against five armed gunmen.

I want good fights.

Not stupid ones.

So, I tossed the gun aside as the next set of people came through.

…

Interlude: Asakura Hiyo, the Fiery Blade

…

The halls were empty and bereft of life, but I took care to watch out for traps even with my equipment recovered.

The sprinklers had gone off after a series of explosions, gunshots resounded from the lower floors, and many of the building's inhabitants began to evacuate.

The independent ninja my family sent may have been a child, but his lethality against the common foe was without question.

But I would deal with the elites myself.

The common folk of this administrative building were trying to escape to vehicles in the lot, but those I sought out awaited another vehicle.

A helicopter.

Something they knew that they couldn’t board, since I had broken into the vault containing my equipment.

I reached the top floor after dispatching a trap with vital energy.

Merely ‘touching’ it made me scowl, as it was the same trap that had been used to knock me out whilst my guard was down.

I considered calling out to him as I reached a door that led to the top floor, but instead chose a simpler path.

Divine Fire Blade: Dawn.

With a swing of my sword starting from its sheathed position, I generated a bright crescent of flame that surged out into the hallway. One of the first techniques made by the Hiyo Clan, it was meant to extend the range of our swords and cut down flying foes by setting them alight. Over the centuries, it went from a broad wave of flame that surged from the whole surface of the blade to a tightly controlled band that formed at the tip of a sword.

A flaming band of plasma that surged forward like a crescent from a single slash.

It cut through the door and the walls and surged into the hall beyond.

There were sounds of shock, screaming, and agony while the top half of the door fell forward.

Over a dozen orcs in military equipment had been behind the door. Many of them were tall and wide enough that the attack simply cut through half their torsos. Some were unlucky and were at the center of the hall and were cut in half. Those who knelt on one leg to steady themselves and wielded a larger weapon had heads sliced cleanly in half.

But there was only one body there that I cared to see.

Daichi was on the floor, one arm gone and holding a seared wound in his side.

He was screaming as I stared at him from the darkness of the stairwell.

Our eyes met, he stopped screaming, and something close to a smirk almost formed on his tanned face as his mouth moved to form words.

I almost hesitated, but the words of the boy who saved me resounded in my head.

“Don’t think. Just kill. Everyone in this building is turning people into breeding slaves, organ donors, and pleasure pets. Just kill them.”

Then, of course, there was the sight of stasis tubes with young women turned into limbless toys and other people made into nothing more than useful flesh.

So, without thinking, I repeated my move three more times.

From north to south.

From southwest to northeast.

From northwest to southeast.

An x with a vertical line through it composed of plasma surged through the hallway and turned everything inside it into nothing more than chunks of burnt flesh.

When I walked into the hall, nothing was recognizable, not even Daichi.

The same would be for the leaders of this group.

I’ll kill them all without even letting them speak a single word.

…

The young independent ninja reached the rooftop and whistled as he looked upon the helicopter that arrived.

“Any chance I can claim that as salvage?” I snorted at his question while going through one of many laptops that my last kills had on their person. They had a safe room right before the entrance to the roof. Its defenses were nothing compared to Blade. “What? You don’t need a helicopter.”

“My family can maintain and use it, unlike you. You would find it difficult to sell, too.” He had taken his helmet off, but a lower mask with a respirator and a pair of goggles with symbols and markings against hypnosis and other attacks remained on his face. He had greenish hair, like the rest of his former clan. “With the risk this mission entailed, I imagine you have a handsome enough sum at your disposal.”

“They offered a treasure valued at five million dollars for whoever retrieved you. A cash bounty for any affiliates. Regular mortals at five thousand each.” He gave a hum and leaned against a railing next to the bound and quivering helicopter pilot. I bound him with a length of tubing from one of the machines on the roof. “That’s eighty thousand cash for me from regular people alone. Ten thousand for any orcs. That’s a hundred thousand for them. And I think your family will want to buy these.”

He gestured at a suit jacket he fashioned into a bag.

Looking at them, I found four demonic weapons.

“If you are willing to part with three, we can purify one for you. That hatchet is very sturdy and sharp. With your fighting style, it will be effective.” I told him bluntly after glancing at the weapons. “But do not touch them as they are. They have corruptive properties.”

“I don’t touch magical weapons without knowing what they are, but thanks for the heads up. I’ll take that offer.” He nodded before blinking and turning my way. He fished a burner phone from his pocket and tossed it my way. “Right, call in the cleanup team. I’d like to get paid and start preparing for my next job.”

I nodded as I called, while an errant thought occurred to me.

Our clan was spread thin due to high demand for our services, leaving us working as pairs or solo.

If I had taken this entire building on by myself, I would’ve struggled to succeed, but here I stand, unhurt and merely a bit tired.

I can make use of this independent ninja.

Especially since I wanted this organization dead.