The First Battles of Ruka

WARNING: Chapters 9-14 detail Ruka's past, which includes several forms of abuse, the deaths of guardians/parents, and other potentially upsetting topics. READER DISCRETION IS HEAVILY ADVISED FOR THESE CHAPTERS.

October 12, 2019

Himiko and Ruka were walking together outside of Aki Murase’s house, the two of them having transformed into their outfits as magical huntresses, albeit with Himiko still wearing a cast on her one arm. They both stopped at his front door and looked at each other. Himiko asked her, “Is this the first time you’re gonna use your weapons in battle?”

“Yes,” Ruka replied to Himiko.

“Remember,” she then told the younger girl. “What we do here never happened. I can’t have the Agency know that I transformed while I’m supposed to be on medical leave, much less that I helped another magical huntress to kill a man. This is very against the rules, or, well, what few rules the Agency has for us surprisingly.”

“Understood.”

“And by the way…”

Ruka, wondering what Himiko was about to say, asked her, “What’s up?”

“Thank you for helping me out a few days ago,” Himiko told her with a smile. “It means a lot, Ruka. You’re a brave girl, you know. Not a lot of people would have thought to do what you did, especially not civilians.”

Ruka returned the favor with her own smile, telling her, “I just did what I thought was right.” She then turned to the front door and took a deep breath. “I’m ready. Are you?”

“Yeah,” Himiko nodded. She then rang the doorbell as Ruka hid behind a bush nearby to conceal herself. After waiting a few moments with no response, she rang it again, and this time, the door opened.

Aki revealed himself to be wearing casual clothes as he opened the door. looked down at Himiko, and asked her, “Who are you?”

“I heard from someone you know that you’d be willing to pay girls to go out with them,” Himiko told him.

Ruka thought to herself as she hid in the bushes, “I remember my grandpa talking with him about this. It’s worth a shot.”

Aki, confused but also worried, asked her, “Who told you that?”

“A good girl never reveals her secrets,” Himiko replied with a fake smile. Internally, she felt disgusted talking to an older man in this way, thinking to herself, “Talking like this to an older man is rubbing me the wrong way already.” She then sized Aki up and told him, “Besides, you look pretty handsome yourself.”

Aki sighed and told Himiko, “You aren’t wrong, but I do want to know why you came here.”

“I just told you.”

“Why did you really come here? Girls don’t just go up to guys' houses and ask for compensated dating, after all, especially not in cosplay.”

“Fair enough,” Himiko replied. “But I think you and I can come to an arrangement.”

With those words, Ruka immediately jumped into action. As she ran out from behind the bush, Himiko pushed Aki with her unbroken hand, startling him. He yelled out, “What the Hell?! What’s going on?!”

Ruka then ran past Himiko with her sword just as Aki tried to attack her in response, and before any of them knew it, the sword slashed across his chest and spilled his blood all over the ground. As Aki fell to the ground, Ruka looked down at him and held the sword to his neck while placing a foot on his chest. “You didn’t expect to see me, didn’t you?”

“Ru-… Ruka!” Aki yelled at her, “You little bitch!”

“Now,” Ruka demanded from him in an angry tone of voice. “Tell me why you paid my grandfather money after you raped me!” When he did not immediately respond and instead tried to grab her leg, she kicked him in the chest and yelled, “ANSWER ME, BASTARD!”

“I… I… Compensate…”

“Compensate what?!”

“Your… Grandfather… Compensate… Him…”

Ruka realized that Aki had compensated her grandfather with the money after he had forced himself on her. Enraged, she let out a yell of anger before sinking her sabre right through his mouth and killing him. As Ruka breathed heavily while Aki died, her legs and her skirt covered in his blood, Himiko asked her, “Are… Are you okay?”

Ruka turned around to her and told her, “This bastard… He left money for my grandfather after he raped me.”

“To compensate for what happened?”

“He thinks I’m some object who can be bought, and my grandfather, none the wiser, took the money anyway.” She then sheathed her sabre. “Or, at least… I hope he was none the wiser.”

“I see.” Himiko then reached into her pants and pulled out rubber gloves. “I’m gonna drag his body into the house a bit more. Ruka, get undressed and shower the blood off your body. After that, put your outfit back on and de-transform. When you transform again, the blood won’t be there on your hunting outfit.”

“Understood,” Ruka replied before she walked away to find a shower to clean herself off. As she did, she thought to herself, “I… I did it… I really killed him. I should be happy, and I am, but… I feel as though I should be happier.”

While Ruka went to find a shower, Himiko dragged his body around a corner and into the living room. She wore rubber gloves to ensure that her fingerprints did not come up on his body. She looked down at his face, which was one of abject terror before his death, and sneered in disgust, “What a fucking creep.” She then walked over and shut the front door before locking it.

…

October 13, 2019

Ryota and Ruka attended Aki’s wake, which was also attended by many of his business associates and friends, none of whom knew the full extent of his lecherous and predatory behavior except Ruka. As the two of them walked up to Aki’s body and kneeled to pray, Ryota told his granddaughter, “It’s a shame what happened to him. He was a good businessman. I hope they catch who did this to him soon.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ruka replied to him before the two knelt down and prayed silently. While Ryota prayed for Aki, Ruka prayed for something very different. “I pray that any other girls he may have forced himself onto will be at peace now,” she thought to herself. “Based on what he said to Kaya-san, I was probably not his first victim, but in a way, I’m glad I was his last. He won’t be able to hurt anyone anymore. Even so… It doesn’t feel too different now that he’s dead.”

As the two got up, one of Ryota’s business associates began talking to him. “I still can’t believe this happened to him. I hope they catch the bastard who did this.”

“Me too,” Ryota nodded. “His parents are devastated.”

Ruka turned to her grandfather’s associate and asked him, “How are his parents doing?”

“They’re still mourning him,” he replied to her. “His mother especially is taking this really hard.”

“I’m sorry for her loss,” she replied. If anything, the only guilt she faced was that his family had to lose him. Sure, Aki may have been a monster, but as far as she knew, his parents were not. “She must be devastated.”

…

A few hours later, after Ruka had practiced fencing with her grandfather again, she was doing homework in her room when she felt her phone vibrate. She picked it up from her desk and saw that it was a text from the Agency. “Huh…” She opened up the text and found that it was a report of a magical beast nearby. “Woah…” She hurriedly opened the app on her phone and pressed the accept option for the mission. She said to herself as she got up, “My first mission!”

As she ran down the stairs, she could smell alcohol nearby and turned to find a servant taking away two empty glass bottles. The servant saw her running down and asked her, “Ruka-sama, what’s going on?”

“Oh, uh…” Ruka realized she had to give him an explanation as to why she was leaving. “I’m gonna go over to Kaya-san’s house and play with her.”

“Alright,” said the servant. “Your grandfather’s passed out on the couch in the family room, by the way.”

“A lot of drinking?”

“Yeah,” said the servant.

“I figured as much.” Ruka then ran out the front door and down the steps to the sidewalk, checking her phone to see where the magical beast was and what class it was. She said to herself as she read her phone, “Okay, a Class Five. That should be easy for someone that’s new to this.”

As she raced around a corner and then crossed a street soon after, she took several deep breaths to calm herself and prepare for her first ever fight as a magical huntress, or at least, her first ever fight against a magical beast. When she ran past an old man, he noticed her fast pace and said to himself in annoyance, “What’s she in such a big hurry for, huh?”

Finally, Ruka arrived at an alleyway behind a grocery store and ran into the darkness, the evening sky slowly giving way to night. She stopped and then held out her left hand to transform, doing so almost instantly. Once she had, she pulled out her sabre and called out, “Okay, where are you?!”

Replying to her was a beast that emerged from a dark portal that had opened up on a wall in front of her. This beast walked on four legs and had the head of a lizard but the body of a larger wolf. When the beast saw Ruka, it immediately spat out a liquid of some kind, causing her to jump out of the way. The beast then got into a pose, ready to pounce at Ruka.

“Come on! Fight me!” She looked over at the spit the beast had tried to attack her with and saw that it was steaming, indicating it was boiling hot. When the beast spat at her again, a small amount of it hit her arm, causing her to let out a short yell in pain. In response to this, she charged at the beast with her sabre. The beast tried to dodge her attack, but she landed a good blow on its back, causing it to scream and spit out more of the same clear hot liquid from before. Ruka, who got some of it on her armor, yelled at the beast as she tried to bury the stinging pain, “Stop spitting at me!”

The beast ignored her as it tried to bite her left arm, to which she kicked the beast in the face. She then swung down as hard as she could at the beast’s neck, but when she went to cut the beast’s head off, the blade only went partially through. Amazingly, the beast managed to momentarily survive the deep cut to its neck and wrestled with her, trying to get the blade out of its body. Ruka then managed to pull the blade out with great difficulty, allowing the beast’s blood to spurt from the neck wound and coat the wall nearby in a dark shade of red.

The beast was not yet done, however. In one last desperate attempt to kill Ruka, it tried to spit at her again, but Ruka managed to jump out of the way as she yelled, “Die already!” She then swung down again, this time on the beast’s face, disfiguring it and rendering it totally unrecognizable from its initial state. As she caught her breath and the beast’s body collapsed to the ground, she said to herself, “My first… My first kill…” Indeed, with this battle, Ruka had managed to snag her first ever kill of a magical beast. This would, of course, be the first of many more to come.

…

October 16, 2019

Daisuke was running towards a reported beast sighting in the evening, having been the first huntsman to acknowledge and respond on the app. As he ran past several people on the sidewalk, he thought to himself, “I haven’t hunted a magical beast in a week. I’ll need to start hunting more so I can prepare for my retirement from active duty.” However, when he rounded a corner, he saw that someone else was already battling the beast in an empty parking lot. “Huh?”

A young girl was slashing at the small beast with a sword, and as she managed to slice its head completely off and kill it, she yelled at the beast, “Now you’re dead!”

“Wait a minute,” Daisuke said to himself as he looked at the girl closely. “Is that…”

The girl looked up at Daisuke and confirmed his worst fears. “Uh… Uncle Daisuke…”

In shock, Daisuke exclaimed, “Ruka?!”

“I can… Um…” Ruka knew that her uncle did not want her to become a magical huntress, and now that he had found out, he would not be happy. “Uncle Daisuke, I…”

Daisuke demanded from her, “Who the Hell recruited you?!”

“Hang on,” Ruka replied back as she pulled out her phone to begin taking photographs of the dead magical beast. “Just let me do this report, and I-“

“Answer me right now!”

A frustrated Ruka yelled back, “Okay, fine! I’m a magical huntress! There! I said it!”

Daisuke paused, completely at a loss for words for what Ruka had done with herself. He had told her many times to not follow in his footsteps and become a magical huntress, and yet she had done just that despite making his warnings very clear to her. After his pause ended, he said to her, “Who… Who recruited you?”

Ruka once again yelled, “Akamatsu-san did!”

“He…” Daisuke, angered that Junpei had signed his niece up, stomped his foot on the ground and yelled, “God damn it, how could he?!”

As he began to walk away, Ruka begged her uncle, “Uncle Daisuke, wait! Don’t go!”

“I’m gonna have a word with that man,” he told Ruka.

“Calm down! You don’t have to do this!”

“I can’t believe he convinced you to do this!”

At the top of her lungs, Ruka yelled at her uncle, “HE DIDN’T!”

With those words, Daisuke stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. “You… You’re telling me you…”

“I was the one who wanted to do this! It’s all my idea! I was the one who convinced him! He didn’t even want to sign me up until I begged him to!”

Daisuke slowly walked towards Ruka, his anger dissipating as he realized she was telling the truth. “You… Why did you…”

“I did it because I’m tired,” Ruka explained as best as she could, tears beginning to fall down her eyes. “I’m sick of how my life is going! I can’t do this anymore, Uncle Daisuke! Living with Grandpa is getting worse and worse by the day! I want to be able to make my own path!”

Daisuke, realizing what she was trying to say, sighed and said, “So he’s being difficult again, I see.”

“Again?”

“Ruka,” Daisuke explained to her. “Your grandfather… Was not always so kind to others… And that included me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said as he struggled to find the words to explain what he meant. “You see… He always pushed for one of his children to eventually inherit his business, and he pushed for all of us to be ready, even if… Well…”

“Well what?”

“Even if we were young and really not ready for it,” Daisuke admitted. “I… I became a magical huntsman for the same reason you did, Ruka. When I was thirteen, I wanted to get away from it all too, and I thought becoming one would get me out of the house and allow me to go down my own path.”

Ruka asked him, “And it did, right?”

“Admittedly, yes,” Daisuke conceded. “But… It’s dangerous work, Ruka. The last thing I want to see is you getting hurt or killed.” He then hugged her and held her tight. “Please, promise me you’ll be safe, Ruka. You’re the only living connection to my brother I have left.”

Ruka returned the hug, which she did not mind despite being hesitant to physical contact from other people at this point. “I promise, Uncle Daisuke.” In her mind, she thought back to the times Daisuke had warned her not to become a magical huntress, and felt bad about not following his original wishes. Even so, however, she knew that this was something she had to do.

…

October 22, 2019

Ruka and Rena were walking home together from school that day. Shiho, Kaede, and Kosuke had not joined them this time. “Kosuke-san feels different,” Rena said to her as they walked down a small city street. “Ever since he came back to school, he’s been a bit more… scared.”

“I noticed that, too,” Ruka nodded. “I hope he’s alright. Whatever happened to him must have rattled him.”

“Rattled?”

“It means you got scared or nervous,” Ruka explained to her. “He very much got rattled by something, but neither Kaede-san nor Kosuke-san are saying anything.”

“Oh, okay…” Rena then told Ruka, “You know, sometimes, you speak like an older woman, Ruka-chan.”

Ruka, somewhat embarrassed, replied to her, “Sorry. It’s just how I was raised, Omine-san.”

“No, no, no,” Rena assured her. “It’s fine! I don’t mind, Ruka-chan! If that’s how you were raised, that’s fine.”

“I get a bit self-conscious of it at times,” she told her. “You… You probably don’t know what that means.”

“No. What does ‘self-conscious’ mean?”

“It’s like… It’s like you’re a bit embarrassed at yourself.”

“Oh, okay.”

Ruka then felt her phone vibrate with a text and pulled it out, initially thinking it was a mission request from the Agency. Instead, it was actually a text from her grandfather. “Huh…”

Rena asked her, “Ruka-chan, what is it?”

“I got a text from my grandfather, but it looks like a mess.” She then put her phone away and told her, “I gotta head home. I’ll see you tomorrow, Omine-san.”

As Rena waved goodbye, she told her, “Bye-bye, Ruka-chan.”

Ruka waved back before running as quickly as she could to her home. The text she got from her grandfather, which was filled with misspellings and other errors, was as follows: ‘hyw Ruka get ur assz back her rihgt now we need tallk!’ It was clear to Ruka that her grandfather had been drinking based on what he had texted her, and that he was angry with her over something.