Bloody Rendezvous
11:45 PM on a Saturday night. An hour in Ralaneas when people usually start making their way home after a long, fun night. Or, if they’re drunk, start vomiting all the alcohol out of their system until they pass out in an alley with a big case of fluid imbalance. Passing by a bunch of salarymen spewing bile and beer from their mouths was a fairly common sight for Ryukari and Fio, especially when it was this late. But the alleyway wasn’t important in itself, no. What was more important and five percent more sanitary was the alleyway next to it, as it was a decent shortcut to a train station.
“Geez...there were way too many goons to punch tonight,” said Ryukari as she fixed her disheveled clothing, ruffled from the hours of fighting she just took part in. “Let’s head home, I can feel my mana supply draining. Hey, Fi, how’re you holding up?”
Fio, as usual, said nothing.
“Well, okay, you didn’t have to go all out on that one group. I told you killing the talkative ones would screw us over in the long run.” She pulled out her phone to check the time as Fio sighed, barely hiding her desire to head home already.
“Okay, it’s-oh my god! 11:45!? We’ve been out way longer than I thought…”
Fio grunted as if to point out how obvious her statement was.
“Well excuse me, but I wasn’t the one that threw knives into someone’s esophagus! You could have just knocked ‘em out or something! Anyway, we gotta hurry through this alleyway and get on a train before they close. I’m not gonna sleep on a garbage bin using a trash bag as a pillow here.”
“It’s not like you don’t end up doing that every other week.” Fio whispered to herself.
“Hey, that only happened four times.” Ryukari pouted a little as she remembered the events exactly. “...Okay, five, but that doesn’t matter. Geez...I knew we should have just taken the car. I’m refueling that thing when we get home.”
Tired from their long night, the vigilantes made their way through the alley. Unlike the one they just passed, this one only had two passed out drunks and one delirious man that was going to join their nap in a few minutes. Yet even though they were the only other people in sight, Fio couldn’t help but feel as though they were being watched.
“Woah-ho-ho! Looks like someone here had a fun night!” Ryukari said, nudging her friend to the direction of one of the sleeping men. Fio, still distracted by the possibility of being followed, paid no mind to the man that looked like he was a recent victim of a muscle buster wrestling move. She inched her hand slowly to a pouch on her side, ready to throw a knife at anything that came too close.
Suddenly, Fio threw three blades behind her, striking multiple shadowy figures that stalked their every move.
“Woah. Good ears.” said Ryukari. “Do you think there are more?”
“...No.” the ninja whispered. Just then, another shadow seemed to fly past the corner of Fio’s eye. She quickly turned her head, but it was already gone before she could find it. As she quickly reassessed herself, Fio suddenly froze up as she frisked through her various pouches. In a matter of seconds, her stoic demeanor began to crack and shift into a panic.
“Fio, you got them, what’s wrong now?”
“It’s gone.”
“What?”
“They got to my bag.”
Ryukari tilted her head slightly, somewhat puzzled by her friend’s unusual reaction. “Huh? But you just had your hand on it. You sure you aren’t thinking about the knives you just threw?”
“The dagger! My dagger isn’t in here!” Fio’s voice began to rise. “One of the bastards following us must have swiped it somehow! How could I be so careless…” She used Replication to create a pair of knives and stood her ground, ready to throw them at the drop of a hat. “Show yourself! Or else I’ll finish off these lowlifes I’ve already injured!”
“Fio,” said Ryukari. “I know what that dagger means to you, but you need to calm down or else you might not find it again-”
“HRAAAGH!” she cried as she launched hundreds of knives around the alley with her magic. Ryukari, knowing that Fio would do everything she can to keep her from harm, simply stood still as the weapons flew past her. The sheer amount of blades thrown revealed multiple people hiding around the environment, completely skewering each and every one of them. As they fell to the ground, Fio searched through them all in a rush, hoping of finding her beloved dagger. Unfortunately for her, not a single one of their corpses had it. “Where is it…” she muttered. “Where is the dagger!?”
As she searched, a large number of footsteps sounded off in unison. Ryukari and Fio glanced at the direction of the noise to find the light at the end of the alleyway becoming clouded with the shadows of over a dozen men. They were lead by a tall, muscular thug wearing a tattered jacket. To Fio, there was no mistaking who they were: the remnants of the gang she and Ryukari fought only moments ago.
With a single nod from the leader, the lackeys formed a wall that blocked the duo’s path. One of the men that didn’t bother going into their oddly rehearsed set-up stepped out of the crowd to hand him a brown pouch. The leader wordlessly took the sack and pulled out an ornate dagger in a silver sheath.
“Miss, is this what you’re looking for?” The man taunted them as he mockingly shook the sheathed blade.
“You.” Fio immediately transitioned herself into a fighting stance and threw two knives at his feet. “Return what is mine before I kill you too.”
“Fio! Don’t be rash!” Ryukari pleaded.
“Well well, after what you’ve been doing all night, you still got some fight in ya.” A false smile was etched onto the leader’s face. “I’ve always wanted to meet you in person...Fio Fiorella.”
Ryukari looked puzzled. “Ah...that’s not her name, dude.”
“Oh?” The man looked at one of his grunts in disapproval and appeared to silently chide him for a research mistake.
“Well, your names aren’t important, I’d say. But since we’re on the subject, I have some names of my own to tell you. Mark and Ben.”
“What?” said Fio, still in a fighting stance.
“Those were the two talkative ones you killed. Surely, you know the people you’ve killed have names, no?”
“I see.”
“Jaqueline, Satoshi, Hayato, Ulric. Ingrid, Deithard, Ken, Peter. All dead in a single night because of a certain shortie of a ninja. And that’s just the rest of tonight’s casualties. I could go deeper into the past-”
“Stop it.”
The man laughed to himself for a second. “What’s the matter? You didn’t seem to have an issue when you were busy stabbing them. It’s too late for any sort of moral clarity now.”
“That’s not it,” Fio muttered. “That’s not it at all.”
“Fio, stand down.” Ryukari said, trying to step in. “We can get it back, but don’t let him get to you right now.”
“Those were my boys you killed, you know.” The man began to growl as he spoke. “In the Saijou Clan, we’re all family, not that you’d know. Where’d you even get this thing? Benito? I bet you stole it off some corpse too-”
Before he could finish his sentence, a blade flew past the leader’s cheek, grazing it before flying past one of the men behind him.
“Agh! Shit!”
“If you didn’t want to grant me the choice of killing heaps of filth such as your clan, you shouldn’t have bothered killing and kidnapping innocent people in the name of greed or a false sense of power. Now hand me the dagger before I drag you back to the mud and add the names of everyone here on your list of deceased members.”
“Well aren’t you just a childish little psychopath.” the man hissed. “You enjoy this, don’t you?”
“I don’t enjoy murder. Nor do I hate it. I simply feel nothing towards people like you.”
“And soon you’ll feel every last bit of pain you’ve inflicted on my men.” He glanced to the gang members behind him with a cold stare. “Kill them.”
Ryukari pounded her fists together and stepped forward. “Let’s make this quick. I’m kinda tired as it is. Try not to kill them, okay?”
The wall of gangsters at the end of the alley broke formation and charged at the two vigilantes, knives and even swords in hand. Fio quickly produced another set of blades and threw four at the closest ones with guns.
Ryukari sighed. “Dammit, I just said…” She quickly shrugged off her annoyance with the fact that she was in danger and began striking the men that came close to her. Though tired and low on mana, she still had enough energy to protect herself and empower her blows. The gangsters thrust at her with knives, but their movements were far too sloppy for her. With a few quick weaves to the side, she chained each movement with strengthened jabs, launching one of them into the wall with every blow. Another man tried to lunge at her, but his arm was quickly caught, leaving him open to a single blow to the head.
Fio, getting the most assailants charging at her, proceeded to run into the crowd to do what she does best. Dodging the hoard’s attacks with deft sidesteps and counters, she wasted no time in aiming directly for vital organs and necks with her blades. With every kill, she gained a new weapon to use. As she painted the walls red, a man that clearly did not understand the meaning of ‘sneak attack’ leaped at Fio with a katana, yelling his loudest battle cry. Already anticipating another group of enemies, she rolled past the swordsman as he missed his cleaving swing entirely and used magic to quickly launch a chained spear into his back, skewering his heart. Fio then yanked it back along with the body, the force of which caused the corpse to throw the sword into the air. Using magic to control it, she swung the chain in a circular motion at a blinding speed, swatting out various members of the crowd and adding more bodies to the end of the spear.
The sword continued to fall, but before it hit the ground, Fio leaped into the air and caught it in a reverse grip. She swung her arm downwards, slamming the end of the chain spear into the other members on the ground. With gravity as her aid, she plummeted down to an unlucky target and cleaved them in half as she landed. Fio quickly glanced to check on her partner in the middle of bisecting another man from the waist up.
“Hey, Fio…!” Ryukari called out. “I could, uh, use a hand here!” She was completely surrounded by six different gangsters but looked no worse for wear save for a few cuts on her top. “Agh, will you just back off already!?” she said as she jumped to split kick two of them.
Fio quickly muttered a spell to create a clone of herself and sent it off to face the leader. She bolted towards Ryukari and used the back of her stolen sword to bash four of them into the alley walls.
“Well, thanks for not killing these guys, I guess. Not much of ‘em left.” She spotted a figure reaching for another weapon in her peripheral vision. “Fio, quick!” Ryukari cried as she disabled the low-life’s arm with a chop to the shoulder. As the man howled in pain, she delivered a swift kick that launched him straight into the air before jumping after him.
“You know what to do!”
Fio created and threw multiple knives at the poor criminal, using her control over them to hold their position upon impact. At the same time, Ryukari delivered a punishing three-hit combo onto him as the frozen daggers kept him in place. She ended it with an ax kick that sent the man crashing straight down into the ground.
“...Okay, not what I was thinking, actually.” Ryukari took a moment to catch her breath, feeling the effects of both the late-night fight and her depleted mana supply. She turned to the end of the alleyway to find the gang leader still fending off Fio’s clone with a shotgun. “I...I think he finally got off his ass…” She stayed put for a few more seconds while Fio picked a knife off the floor, preparing to fight the leader. Suddenly, in the corner of her eye, she spotted something moving. Two of the criminals that Fio knocked aside earlier were still conscious and armed! One of them produced a knife from their pockets and the other took aim with their shotgun pointed straight at Fio’s head.
“Fio, get back!” Ryukari lunged at the gunner and kicked him aside, but before she could turn back around, a sudden twinge struck her side. She knew she was stabbed by the other man. After all, there was no armor or leftover magic to prevent it from piercing her body. But pain isn’t something she had time to process, and her body didn’t let her stop. Ryukari whipped back around to slam the criminal into the wall with a backhanded fist before springing back after the gunner. The gunman was still disoriented from the kick, but the shotgun wasn’t knocked very far away from his landing spot. As he spotted Ryukari charging in after him, he leaned on a nearby crate to steady his aim. Fio, still far away from the gunner but running low on mana herself, tried to save her friend by launching a knife at the gunman. The blade struck the gun itself, moving its aim to the right for a brief moment, giving Ryukari an opening to strike…
A loud bang echoed throughout the district from the alleyway as Ryukari delivered a kick to the gunner’s face, finally incapacitating him. She looked toward Fio and smiled upon seeing that she was unharmed. “Oh thank God...not a scratch…” she panted. As she bent down and put her hands on her legs, she felt a large amount of liquid suddenly coat her palms. Lifting her hands up to find out the cause, her carefree demeanor cracked as she gazed into the blood on her hands. Ryukari looked down to find that a few pellets from the shotgun managed to pierce her left leg, even with the faulty aim. The adrenaline in her body began to lose its effect and a slow sensation of pain throbbed at the oozing bullet wounds.
“...Aw dammit.” she mumbled, trying to keep a strong face for both Fio’s morale and her own.
“Ryukari!” Fio cried out. She tried to run over to her but was suddenly pulled by the neckline of her gi and tossed to the side by the gang leader.
“You know, it was rather sloppy of you to send a clone after me back there.” said the leader, picking up a shotgun. “I can see why my men had trouble with you earlier. But hey, I get the opportunity to finish one of you off right here and now, and how could I ever pass that up?” He bashed Ryukari to the ground with the butt of the gun. “Alright, let’s get this over with before the shortie stabs me.”
“Heh...you aren’t the first person to corner me like this, you know.” Ryukari huffed in defiance as she picked herself up using the alley walls as support.
Fio tried to use a wind spell that could propel her to the leader, but her exhaustion was becoming apparent and her mana supply was wearing thin. She only had enough to create a few more weapons. In desperation, Fio threw the knife she stole from one of the gang members and dashed toward her friend in hopes of saving her.
But before Fio or the knife could reach him, the man fired the gun, shooting Ryukari in the abdomen. The pain became too much to bear and she was knocked back to the ground without another word. Fio stopped dead in her tracks upon seeing her blade miss its target and her best friend bleeding profusely. Guilt consumed her mind until only one thought remained: ‘You were too late’.
“Ohoho, sure I’m not,” the leader chuckled to himself. “But I will be the last! Ah, what am I doing, spouting threats to a corpse!”
Fio stared into the condition of her friend’s body. Countless voices in her head began to speak up once more. They preyed on her anguish, mocking her for her mistakes. That this was a direct result of her own failure to kill the people harming her earlier. To not draw unnecessary attention. To finish the fight as fast as possible.
To protect one of the only people that gave a damn about you.
Fio snapped back into reality to find herself face to face with the barrel of a gun. The man holding it gloated to her for what felt like hours to her, but she couldn’t make out a single word he said. Fio’s vision began to wane into a blur, but she could still spot multiple people getting up to surround her. But it was not her wounds that clouded her vision. It was pure rage. There was nothing left in the world to inhibit her actions. Nothing to balance her emotions. All she knew at this point was to slaughter everyone responsible for hurting her friend.
With a quick swipe to the side, Fio knocked the gun out of the leader’s hands with a knife and tackled the closest gangster with a blade to the neck. As soon as the corpse hit the floor, she quickly sprung up and conjured long, spiked chains. Fio let out an anguished scream as she wildly swung them around the alley, swatting and impaling every other living grunt save for their leader. Gory chunks splattered the walls of the alley as the leader bore witness to a horror show of all his remaining men being torn apart by the chains and blades. Trembling in fear but still determined to avenge his allies, he grabbed his shotgun and proceeded to aim at Fio. But Fio suddenly materialized in front of him with her stolen katana and swung down, breaking both the firearm and the sword from the sheer amount of force she used.
“You have the nerve to be angry over death after what you’ve done!?” The leader was growing more unhinged by a mixture of rage and fear. “Why should you get time to mourn when I can’t even do the same for them!” He suddenly broke his defensive stances and prepared to slash at Fio. “You’re just a murderer!” A single swing punctuated his cry, but Fio managed to dodge it. “A child with nothing to look back on!” Another swing, this time it tore through a part of her sleeve. “No better than us common crooks!” Third swing. Fio’s dodging began to slow down, forcing her to resort to blocking it with her own sword. The enraged leader began to slash wildly at her in hopes of breaking her guard. “You think you can change everything by fighting or killing us all!? You! Change! Nothing!”
The leader punctuated his final words with a downward strike packed with every ounce of strength he had. The amount of force in the swing broke Fio’s guard in an instant, forcing her out of a balanced stance. As she saw another slash crashing downwards, Fio decided that nothing mattered at this point and used the last of her mana to create a dagger. She quickly sidestepped away from the blade, but it was too late. The leader’s sword cut cleanly through Fio’s left shoulder, severing her arm completely. Yet she still reached out to try and finish him off.
Using her right arm, she unleashed a flurry of stabs at the leader’s hand and pinned him to the ground, forcing him to drop the sword in the process. With him completely at Fio’s mercy, she used her dagger as a crowbar to pry out his throat. She dug out his carotid artery and proceeded to shovel out chunks of meat until he suffocated. Every signal in her body told her brain to stop and shut down from her injuries, but her killing intent refused to let that happen. A flow of tears dripped down Fio’s face as a result of the pain she wasn’t even able to process. And yet, she continued to tear through the leader’s corpse until his neck was a gushing crater of blood.
With everyone else finally dead, Fio stood up, breathing heavily over her ordeal. She took five steps away from her latest victim before collapsing face first onto the pavement. A pool of blood quickly formed out from where her left arm used to be.
“That’s it,” she whispered to herself. “I’m done.”
With her best friend gone, she didn’t have any other reason to stand up and call a healer. All she wanted at this point was to wait until she died of blood loss and began to rot alone. After a moment of silence, Fio suddenly heard slow, weak footsteps coming closer to her. With what little strength she had left, she tried to yell.
“Don’t...come any closer.” The footsteps ignored her warning. She swiped her blade across the ground in a half-circle motion in an attempt to scare them. “Don’t! Come closer!” Tears began to form in her eyes once again. “Let me die here alone. I’ve already lost everything. If you take one more step I’ll...I will…!”
“Fio! It’s me!”
The sound of the voice shocked Fio, but at the same time calmed her. Without moving a single inch from her position, she glanced up to find a heavily injured, but still living Ryukari. Her abdomen was bloody and she seemed to slouch in pain, but she still gave her friend a warm smile to let her know she’s alright.
“...You...but…”
“Ah, c’mon, Fifi! You of all people know I’ve been through worse.” Ryukari held out a bloody kimono sleeve with a hand hanging from one end and a stump in the other. “I, uh...I found your arm. Hehe…oh, and I also got the bag your dagger was in, so don’t worry!”
Fio said nothing, but Ryukari knew she was just filled with relief.
“...Well, we gotta get going. I made an emergency text to Victor and he should be able to reattach your arm before we get home. Doubt he’ll let us get a portal home though...now come on, I’ll carry you.” She quickly checked her phone.
“...Well okay, if we tell Vic to hustle we can still make it onto the last train. Not like this is the first time he’s healed up one of our limbs anyway, right?”
Ryukari and Fio limped to Victor’s meeting spot before getting onto the last train of the night. Though their wounds were mostly healed in haste to stop bleeding, the duo was still drenched in blood and viscera, creating an unsanitary trip home for both them and the other passengers. Although late-night oddities were expected in Ralaneas, it was still rather strange to see two bloody, beaten women sit down in silence, especially since one of them was holding their own severed arm. Not strange enough to ask them about it, mind you, but still strange nonetheless. That night, anyone on the last train home gained something to talk about with their coworkers the following morning.
“Ah...I know it’s late and he still stopped our bleeding and all,” Ryukari sighed, gazing out the window. “but Victor could have at least cleaned us up before we got here. Or even reattach your arm, you know? I get that he hates being called late at night, but what a dick move.” Ryukari turned to check on Fio, only to find her leaning to the side of her seat, resting soundly with tears rolling down her face. Her eyes, although still closed, began to wince as she whispered in her sleep.
“I’m...sorry…”
“...Yeah. Sleep tight, Fio. It’s been a harsh night.”
She checked her phone. 12:52 AM. It was time to take a well-deserved rest too.
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Author's Notes
A slightly longer short story I wanted to test myself on with Ryukari and Fio. I've never really written any sort of "action sequence" before, so sorry if it might be sloppy to read. I'll try to do better next time! I plan to eventually write a longer story featuring someone else using this event as a prologue of sorts. But for now, I hope you enjoy the read!