An Arm and A Body

October 2, 2023

Ruka was walking home from school alone when she got a text on her phone. As soon as she pulled it out of her backpack and looked at it, she saw that it was a notification from the Agency, and as she read the text, she began to sprint in the opposite direction of where she had originally been walking in. “Shit,” she muttered to herself as she ran past several people. The text was for a report of a Class Two beast emerging from a portal near a hospital. “This can’t be good.”

As she rounded a corner and ran towards said hospital, she narrowly dodged a car while crossing the road. The driver honked her horn at her and yelled out the window as he came to a stop, “Watch where you’re fucking going! I almost hit you, bitch!”

Ignoring the driver, Ruka continued on, and when she raced past an alleyway, she saw something in the corner of her eye and stopped to head back to it. Upon looking down the alleyway, she saw two pairs of glowing eyes staring back at her from the darkness. “I really hope that’s not two of them,” she said to herself as she held out her left hand and her transformation ring began to glow. In a flash of light, she transformed into her magical huntress outfit, and she pulled out her loaner sword, ready to fight as the beast within the darkness growled at her. The alleyway had been totally subsumed by a portal, and as such, once she stepped inside, no one else could see her. “Anyone here?!”

Then, a single voice was heard within the darkness that Ruka recognized immediately. “Help! Help me!”

“What the Hell?! Ayano?!” Ruka immediately raced in, charging at the beast. The voice calling out from the alleyway belonged to her classmate, Riko Ayano. As she ran in, she saw that the Class Two beast she would be facing was a four-eyed lizard-like creature that was almost the size of a kei car. The creature, whose skin was a sickly green, gave off a foul stench that caused Ruka some mild discomfort as she began to battle the beast. She swung for its upper right leg, but the beast instead deflected her attack with a tendril of sorts that emerged from its back. “You gotta be kidding me!” She managed to strike the tendril, but was unable to cut all the way through before it retreated. “Damn it!” She then was able to strike it again, and this time, cut it completely off. The beast yelled in pain, causing Ruka to wince from how loud the beast was and how awful the smell of its breath was.

Riko, who was behind the beast and had been badly injured, called out to Ruka, yelling, “Kishio-san! Kishio-san, is that you?! What the Hell are you doing?!”

“Just hang on!” Ruka saw a second tendril emerge from the beast’s back and battled with it. She was clearly not entirely used to operating with a katana as opposed to a longsword given her unusual difficulty with the battle. She yelled at the beast, “Stop messing with me already!” As she continued to battle the beast, it then opened its mouth and exhaled a visible gas of some kind that gave off an even fouler smell than it already had, causing Ruka to cough and her eyes to water. “Fuck, this is bad!” As she tried to see through the gas, one of the tendrils smacked her in the chest, sending her down. Thankfully, her armor plating was able to save her from injury, but it did leave a small dent in said armor. “Agh, shit!”

Riko yelled in a state of panic as she tried to see past the beast, “Kishio-san!” By now, she had lost most of her left arm, and was bleeding severely from the stump that remained. As she looked around, she grabbed her school uniform coat, which had been torn into several pieces when she was initially attacked, and used her remaining arm to try to make a tourniquet despite growing weaker from blood loss. “I… My blood… My arm…” As she managed to tie a simple knot for the impromptu tourniquet, she looked at her severed arm and then collapsed back down onto the ground. “My arm…”

Meanwhile, Ruka grabbed her sword and got back up, coughing from the gas as she charged back into battle to fight the beast. “I won’t lose to you!” When she was confronted by a tendril once again, she managed to get a good hit on it, cutting it off and causing the beast to roar in pain as the tendril quickly retreated back to its body.

As Ruka rubbed her eyes with her arm to try to get some relief, she heard several gunshots behind her, followed by the beast once again crying out in pain. She then turned around to see Tenko running towards her with her gun drawn. She yelled to Ruka, “Go get the victim! I’ll hold the beast off!”

“Be careful,” Ruka told her as she coughed again. “It can exhale gas! It’s like God damn tear gas!”

Tenko immediately picked up on the foul stench of the beast once she reached Ruka and covered her nose. “Ugh, that smells horrible!” She then told Ruka, “Go get the victim!”

Riko screamed from behind the beast, “Help me!”

Tenko, like Ruka, immediately recognized who it was. “Wait, is that Aya-“

“It is!” Ruka then dashed forwards, determined to get past the beast to rescue her classmate. As she darted past the beast, it used another tendril to try to attack her, but Ruka was able to battle it back with her sword before she finally made it past. As she turned her head, she saw Riko lying in a pile of blood with the poorly-made tourniquet still on her left arm stump. “Holy shit, Ayano!”

“Kishio… San…” Riko weakly tried to reach for her, but her remaining arm fell to the ground from how tired she was.

“Oh my God…” Ruka looked at the makeshift tourniquet that Riko had made and pulled out a small proper tourniquet of her own from a small pocket on her right sleeve. She then quickly fastened it on the left arm stump that Riko had, and once it was tight enough, she took the cloth tourniquet off. “Come on,” she said to her as she helped her to her feet. “We gotta get you out of here! Can you walk?!”

“My leg… Agh…” Riko looked down at her right leg, and it was at that moment that Ruka realized it was broken due to the way it was twisted. “My leg…”

“Fuck,” she said as she gently lowered her back down to the ground, realizing she could not carry her out in her current state until the beast was defeated. “Your right leg is broken, alright.”

Meanwhile, Tenko had finished shooting the last of the bullets in her gun’s magazine, and while she had succeeded in weakening the beast slightly, she had not killed it. By now, the beast had lost one of its four eyes due to a bullet to the head, and it was angry. She quickly reloaded her gun, but as she cocked it, she was knocked back by a tendril, sending her to the ground. Cut up by the attack, which had also broken her nose from when she hit the ground, she tried to wipe blood off of her face as it poured down and looked up at the beast, angrily yelling at it, “Why won’t you just die already?!”

“Hang on,” then cried another voice from behind her. When she looked to her rear, she saw Yoko running towards her with her crossbow in hand. She then took aim at the beast and fired a red-tipped explosive bolt at it. When the bolt hit its face, it caused a small explosion that instantly disfigured the creature’s face, causing it to yell through its mutilated mouth in pain. Yoko then turned to Tenko, saw she was bleeding profusely from her nose, and asked her, “Tenko, are you okay?!”

“I’m fine, Yoko-senpai,” she said as she wiped away more blood from her face. “The bastard just broke my nose.”

Yoko then demanded, “Where the Hell is Kishio?! Shouldn’t she be here with you?!”

“There’s a victim behind the beast she’s tending to,” Tenko told her. “She’s a classmate of her’s, I think. She’s pretty badly hurt.”

“Fuck me, this is bad.”

Then, both of them heard Ruka let out a primal roar from behind the beast. When they looked, they saw her slicing into the beast from its back, having jumped onto it. As she cut deeper and deeper into the beast with every swing, it tried to throw her off, but she held her ground with the katana firmly implanted in its body. She yelled at the beast, “Die already!” A tendril then emerged from its back, intending to rip Ruka off of it once and for all

Tenko yelled out to Ruka as she aimed her gun at the beast, “Behind you!” She then fired three shots at the tendril, striking it twice and forcing it to retreat as the beast winced in pain.

Ruka yelled back at Tenko, “Thank you!” Finally, she pulled her sword out from the beast’s body and slashed into the back of the beast’s neck, and it seemed like this blow was the final blow they all needed to end this battle. As a torrent of blood sprayed out of the wound, the beast let out one last scream, causing Ruka to fall to the ground, before it collapsed in pain and exhaustion.

Tenko and Yoko both ran for Ruka as the beast slowly died from blood loss. The latter yelled at her, “Kishio, what the Hell happened?!”

“Agh, fuck,” she said as she got up, covered heavily in the beast’s blood. “It’s not me you should be worried about. It’s Ayano over there.” She then pointed to Ayano, who was lying nearby and by now was slowly drifting in and out of consciousness.

“Go attend to her,” Yoko told Tenko. “We’ll handle the photos and the calls.” Tenko nodded and ran for Riko, intending to help her despite her own relatively minor wounds. Meanwhile, Yoko pulled out her phone and began dialing the number of the Yokosuka Branch Office of the Agency to call in the incident and request medical assistance.

Ruka looked at the beast as Yoko began talking on the phone and said to herself, “Fuck… That was a tough one. It’s a good thing you guys got here when you did.” She then looked at Riko and Tenko and walked over, asking the two of them, “How are you guys doing?”

“She lost a lot of blood before you got that tourniquet on her,” Tenko told her as she looked over her mangled right leg. “Her right leg is broken in at least two places. She’s not doing too well. Is Yoko-senpai calling for help?”

“Yeah,” Ruka replied as she knelt down beside Riko’s head. “Hey, Ayano, can you hear me?”

“Kishio…” Riko slightly opened her eyes and looked at Ruka, her vision fading from how weak she was. “You… Did you save me?”

“We did,” Ruka replied to her. “We got help coming, Ayano. You’re gonna be alright. How did you get yourself mixed up in all this shit anyway?”

“I… I was just… Passing by…” Riko then looked at the body of the dead beast nearby. “I was grabbed by something, and… I woke up with my arm gone… Oh my God…” Riko began to cry, realizing what had happened to her now that she was no longer in mortal danger from the beast. “My arm… Oh God, my arm…”

“Don’t focus on that right now,” Ruka told her. “Right now, you’re lucky to still be alive. We’ll deal with your arm once we stabilize you and get you to the hospital, okay? Just hang on for us, Ayano.”

“Kishio… Ruka…” Riko then looked up at her and gave her a faint smile. “Thank you…”

Ruka squeezed her right hand to reassure her. “We’ll be right here until an ambulance comes. We won’t leave your side.”

Curious about her, Tenko asked Ruka, “How long have you known her?”

“Ever since I started my second year. We’ve really only been acquaintances, but she’s pretty nice, actually.” Ruka then looked back down at Riko and sighed, saying to both of them, “I really did not expect this to happen to someone in my class. Man, this crap sucks.”

…

Ruka, who had returned to her normal state, sat outside the trauma center room where Riko had been brought as doctors worked on her. She had indeed survived, but she had lost a lot of blood as well as her arm, not to mention her right leg, which, as it turned out, had been broken in three places. The Agency had its own hospital and trauma center located near the American naval base in Yokosuka, and it was often where both injured magical huntresses and those injured by magical beast attacks came from.

As she checked her phone, she saw two adults, a man and a woman, come running up the hallway. The man asked her, “Is my daughter in there?!”

“You must be Ayano’s parents,” Ruka said to them as she got up and bowed. “I regret that we have to meet under these trying circumstances. I’m a classmate of your daughter. I was also the one who saved her life. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if you can enter the room as of yet.”

A doctor in scrubs and a face mask then came out of the room and turned to Riko’s parents. “Are you Ayano Riko’s parents?”

“We are,” said her mother, who was clearly despondent. “How is she?!”

“We stabilized her condition,” the doctor told them. “I can bring you guys in so we can discuss what her exact condition is in private.”

“Please,” said Riko’s father. As the two of them walked in, they both looked at Ruka silently, wondering what exactly had happened to their daughter and how she had been saved.

Ruka sighed, feeling bad for them. She thought to herself as she sat back down, “I can only imagine the shit they’re going through right now. Their daughter’s gonna have to live without an arm for the rest of her life. Even so… I’m glad she’s still alive.”

A younger nurse in blue scrubs then walked over to Ruka and asked her, “How does it feel to be back here after you just got out last month?” She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, and had a small mole beneath her mouth as well as black hair with a hime cut.

“I’m glad to be a visitor and not a patient this time,” Ruka replied with a faint smile. “In all seriousness, though, I’m really glad we were able to rescue someone alive this time, Fujita-san.”

“Your uncle told me about what happened to that boy you and your teammates tried to save,” the nurse, whose name was Arisa Fujita, replied. “I’m really sorry you had to go through that.”

“Thank you,” Ruka replied. “To be honest, I’ve seen shit like that before, so it didn’t get to me too much, but I could tell it affected the others on the team.” Ruka, of course, knew that what she said was partially a lie. The boy’s death still affected her, even though she did not show it as much. “But enough about me. What about you? Have you been busy here?”

“It hasn’t been bad, actually,” Arisa replied. “It’s been pretty…” She stopped herself, not wanting to say a certain word. “It’s been not busy all day.”

“Ah, nice,” Ruka replied with a chuckle. “You caught yourself before you said ‘quiet’. You’re learning.”

“I assume your uncle told you about what happened when I said it back in June?”

“Yep. You said the forbidden word, and right after, the hospital got like three trauma patients in a row in a single evening.”

“I got some well-deserved shit for that,” Arisa laughed. “Anyway, I gotta go up to the third floor. Have a good one, Kishio.”

“Same to you, Fujita-san,” Ruka said as Arisa left to go attend to patients on the third floor of the four-story hospital. Once she was gone, Ruka sighed and said to herself, “It’s getting late…” She then got up from the chair and arched her back to stretch. As she did, she felt her phone vibrate, and when she pulled it out, she saw that it was for another beast sighting nearby. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” She then checked who had answered up, and saw both Hana and another unknown name not affiliated with the Fox Knights appear. “Well, they got it. I’ve had enough of my share of hunting for the day. It’s just a Class Five.”

…

Hana rushed over to an abandoned apartment building, checking her phone to see that she was going to the right address. As she raced in, her transformation ring glowed and she instantly transformed into her hunting outfit. She then stopped as she looked around the dark and unlit corridors of the building, calling out, “Is anyone here?! Does anyone need help?!”

She then heard what sounded like heavy and inhuman footsteps from behind her down a hallway leading to several apartments. She quickly drew her sword and turned around, wondering who the footsteps belonged to. She used her free hand to pull out a flashlight from her belt, but as she shined it down the hallway, she found no one, and the footsteps suddenly stopped. She cautiously walked down the hallway, looking for whoever or whatever made the footsteps as well as the other magical huntress that had acknowledged and responded to the sighting. As she slowly made her way down, she felt like she was being watched from the shadows of the decrepit building.

She looked to her left and found that one of the apartment doors was open. She aimed her flashlight into the apartment and found it to be devoid of anything besides some trash and paper scraps on the floor. Additionally, the paint on the walls inside was starting to peel from a complete lack of maintenance. However, when she walked inside, she was suddenly hit with a pungent smell, one that she instantly recognized. “It smells of death and blood,” she whispered to herself. As she got close to a door to another room within the apartment, the smell got more intense. She took a deep breath and opened the door, and when she did, her eyes widened with shock at what she found. “Holy shit…”

In what appeared to be an old bathroom was the body of a teenage girl, no more than seventeen years old. She had been dressed in a brightly-colored sailor fuku-like uniform and had been stabbed with something several times in the chest and abdomen. She was also missing an eye and an ear, as well as her right hand. As Hana looked at the body, she found a transformation ring on her remaining hand, indicating she was a magical huntress. It was obvious based on her injuries that she was dead.

However, the state of her body meant that she had been here long before the magical beast sighting had been reported. Additionally, as Hana looked at her face, she realized that she did not look like the other magical huntress that had responded with her. “This… She… She was dead well before anyone got here… At least two hours…” She thought to herself as she put her flashlight away and then pulled out her phone to take photos and make a report, “She definitely isn’t the other magical huntress that came here. That leaves only one question: Where is the other one?”

She took ten photos of the body using the flash function on her phone. She then dialed the number for the Yokosuka Branch Office, after which a man’s voice came through. “Protection and Research Agency. Do you have an emergency?”

“This is Miyashita Hana of the Yokosuka Branch, Badge Number Yokosuka 15452,” Hana identified herself as. “I found a dead body in the apartment building where that Class Five I’m assigned to was reported, and I think it’s one of our own. It’s in Apartment Four on the first floor.”

“Okay,” said a dispatcher at the office. “Did you get photographs of the body?”

“Affirmative. I sent them through the app.”

“There should be another magical huntress on the mission. Have you made contact with her?”

“No. I haven’t seen her or the Class Five at all yet. The body I found definitely isn’t her. I think I heard footsteps earlier, but they were too heavy to be a person’s. I can’t find the source of them, though.”

“Alright. We’ll get a crew over there as soon as we can. Call us back if you find anything else suspicious.”

“Understood. Goodbye.” Hana then hung up with the branch office and took a deep breath. As she walked out of the old bathroom and put her phone away, she heard the same heavy footsteps again from the hallway, albeit closer than before, and quickly gripped her katana with her other hand. She slowly tiptoed towards the door of the apartment, not wanting to be heard but wanting to confront whoever or whatever was nearby as the footsteps got closer. “Whatever the Hell you are,” Hana thought to herself. “You won’t get away!” As the footsteps drew nearer, Hana could tell they definitely did not belong to a human. They were far too heavy, too loud, and too slow to reasonably belong to someone. Then, they suddenly came to a stop, and as they did, Hana could hear what faintly sounded like a girl crying from the hallway. She was deeply confused at first, but as the crying continued, she began to wonder if perhaps the magical beast she had been trying to find was able to mimic human vocalizations. “These cries,” she thought to herself. “They could easily be a trap. Maybe this beast can mimic our voices.”

Then, she heard the same voice call out from the hallway. “Somebody help me! Oh God, somebody help me!” The voice then stopped crying and instead let out an extremely loud and pained scream that echoed throughout the first floor of the building.

“Screw this,” Hana muttered to herself as the screaming continued. She then raced out into the hallway, ready to confront whoever was out there, but when she ran out, the screaming suddenly stopped. Confused by everything going on, she shook her head and said to herself, “What the Hell… This is too weird…”

Then, she heard a growl behind her and turned around to find a humanoid beast dragging an unconscious body behind it. The beast had black eyes, bloodied teeth, pale white skin, and a very gaunt appearance. For its height, the beast was a full two meters tall and towered over Hana. The beast opened its mouth and let out the same scream as before as it dropped the body it was dragging and displayed a large knife. “Help me! Somebody help me!”

Hana quickly attacked the beast, her theories about it mimicking its victims’ voices seemingly being proven. The beast tried to stab Hana, but she deflected the attack with her right hand and then cut into the beast with her katana. She was not able to cut all the way through, but she was able to severely injure it. The beast let out an inhuman scream in pain as Hana yelled at it, “Did you kill that girl in the apartment?!”

The beast did not answer her, and tried to grab her sword instead. Hana replied by kicking the beast with her left foot before dodging a swing of its knife. She then stabbed the beast with her sword in the chest, causing it to stop moving and scream again in pain. Hana saw the beast try to slash at her with the knife and pulled her sword out before decapitating the beast with a swift blow to the neck. The beast soon fell to the ground, killed instantly by the blow. As it died, Hana ran to the person that the beast had been dragging and found that it was a girl who had a broken leg and several cuts and bruises. Her outfit, which had a blue cape, and a ring on her finger confirmed that she was another magical huntress, and as Hana pulled her phone out to check, she was able to see that it was the same magical huntress who had accepted the mission alongside her.

“Hey,” Hana said as she bent down to see the girl, who was the same age as Yoko. “Can you hear me? Hello?”

The girl, who bore short violet hair, slowly opened her eyes and found Hana staring at her. She immediately panicked and tried to back up, but when she put weight on her broken right leg, she felt an intense pain and let out a yelp. “Agh, fuck!”

“Don’t panic,” Hana told her in a calm and caring voice. “Your right leg is broken. I killed the beast for you, so you’re safe.”

“You… He’s dead?”

“Yes. He’s dead.”

“Oh, thank God…” The other magical huntress was relieved. “He ambushed me. I thought he was someone else calling for help.”

Hana’s smile immediately faded. “What did the magical beast sound like when it called for help?”

“It kinda sounded like a girl, actually.”

“Did…” Hana realized right then and there what the Class Five had done. “Did you go into Apartment Four?”

“No? Why do you ask?” The other girl then sniffed the air and asked Hana, “Do you smell that? It smells like blood, but… It’s not from the magical beast.”

“Oh God…” Hana sighed and told the other girl, “Don’t move. I gotta take some photos of the scene and start making the report. I’ll also call an ambulance for you. In the meantime…” Hana then gave her a small pouch filled with healing dust. “This should help with your broken leg a bit. Once it’s stabilized, it will shorten your recovery time, but until it’s stabilized, don’t put it on your leg.”

“Oh, uh… Thank you…” The girl then asked her as she began to take several photos, “Have I seen you before? Your face seems familiar.”

“I’m Miyashita Hana,” Hana replied to her as she turned back around. “Leader of the Fox Knights.”