Fox Knights vs Class One, Part 1

A transformed Ruka found a large portal next to a hospital, but found no magical beasts anywhere outside of it. However, she did find a young girl of about ten years old sitting and crying on the ground, clearly frightened by something she had seen. She ran to the girl and asked her in a soothing tone, “What happened? Are you okay?”

“A really scary thing took my friend,” said the little girl. “I tried to grab her, but…” The girl then broke down and cried, tears flowing down her face. “I couldn’t save her!”

Ruka patted the girl on the shoulder and told her, “We will find your friend and rescue her, okay? I swear.” Her tone of voice was rather soothing, a contrast to the tone of voice she usually used in battles and more in line with how she spoke in more formal sittings.

“Please, hurry! I could hear her screaming when she was taken! Someone else already went in!”

Shocked, Ruka replied, “Wait a minute, someone already went in?!”

“Yeah! Please, hurry!”

As Hana caught up with her, she told Ruka, “Yoshiro-kun, Miyamura-san, and Fujimori-senpai are coming too! There’s another magical huntress I don’t recognize that also acknowledged!”

“Shit,” Ruka muttered. “Someone else got here before we did and went in alone. Whoever it is has no idea what’s in store for her.” She then told the little girl, “We’re gonna head in now, okay? Stay out here and don’t follow us in. It’s too dangerous for you.”

“You’ll find my friend, right?”

Ruka gave her a soft pat on the head and told her with a smile, “Of course. I promise you that we’ll bring her back.” She turned to Hana and told her as she drew her sword, “That other magical huntress must have beat us to the punch. This girl says her friend got taken by a beast and someone else went in after them.”

“Damn it.” Hana then drew her own sword. “Let’s go!”

When they ran into the portal, the little girl outside looked on, amazed by what she had seen. She thought to herself, “Who… Who were they? They looked like the heroes I see on TV… Were they like magical girls?”

As the two of them ran into the portal, they were immediately confronted by a pack of five wolf-like magical beasts who growled and barked at them. “Shit,” Ruka said to Hana. “We got company! This Class One didn’t come alone!”

“Looks like we ended up in Halargia based on our surroundings,” Hana commented. The area they were in was a grassy plain sometime late in the evening, the sky above them being a dark shade of red and blue. To their south was a large and dense forest, typical of most of the land in Halargia.

One of the wolf beasts then pounced at them, causing Ruka to slash at it with her sword and immediately kill it. When she tried to do the same to a second beast, it dodged her attack, only for Hana to nail it with a swift blow to its neck that decapitated it. The third wolf beast jumped up and nearly bit Ruka, but she managed to slice it in half with a quick motion of her sword. “Get out of our fucking way!”

Hana battled the fourth beast, which dodged two attacks from her in quick succession. Then, with the third swing of her sword, she managed to split the wolf beast’s head open when it tried to bite her left leg, instantly killing it. Finally, the fifth beast, seeing all of its packmates being killed, ran off away from them, clearly afraid of being the next to die.

Ruka was about to pursue it, but Hana told her, “Wait, hold it! Focus on finding the Class One first!”

“Right,” Ruka admitted as she stopped. “Where the Hell is it, though?!”

Then, they both heard a loud roar come from afar. They both looked to find that the grassy plain ended at a cliff with a singular tree next to the edge, and that whatever had made the sound was at the bottom of said cliff. “There,” Hana pointed. “Over the edge of the cliff!”

As they ran over, they began to hear screaming as well, albeit screaming that did not sound like that of a little girl, but instead that of a teenage girl. Ruka said to Hana, “A thousand yen that's the other magical huntress!”

“Most likely. She sounds like she’s in trouble!” As they reached the edge of the cliff, they looked over and found the magical beast they were looking for. “Oh no…”

A large three-headed dragon was down below, fiercely guarding an unconscious young girl as a magical huntress lie on the ground before it, clearly badly injured as she screamed for help. All around the scene of the battle were small fires and burned grass, and it soon became clear how the fires began when the middle head of the dragon spat out a small stream of fire into the sky, seemingly coughing up something as it did. Ruka remarked, “Holy shit…”

Hana then pointed at something else and yelled, “Look at that!” As Ruka looked at an object that Hana had noticed that was near the unconscious girl behind the dragon, she realized that it was in fact a badly-burned dead body. “That’s a dead body!”

“Damn it! The magical beast killed someone already! How are we gonna get down there?!”

Hana then held out her left hand as her transformation ring glowed again, and when it did, her backpack immediately materialized on her back. She then pulled it off and opened it up, pulling out a rope and then quickly tying it around the tree they had seen earlier. “We’ll have to go down with a rope. It’s the only option we got.” She then pulled out two pairs of gloves for her and Ruka.

Ruka sighed and replied as she took a pair of gloves from her, “Alright. I hope this works.”

As Hana put the backpack back on and then put on her gloves before sheathing her sword, she said, “I’ll go down first. Make sure the rope doesn’t break.” She then grabbed onto the rope with her hands and went over the edge, carefully fast-roping her way down. Once she made it down, she yelled up to Ruka, “Hurry!”

“I’m coming,” she replied before she put on her own gloves and sheathed her sword. As she fast-roped down to the ground below, she thought to herself, “I’m praying that that little girl near the dragon isn’t dead, too. I promised the girl at the entrance to the portal I’d save her friend.”

When Ruka reached the ground, both she and Hana then drew their swords once again and ran at the three-headed dragon, which immediately noticed their presence and turned around to face them. A fire roared in the mouth of the middle head before it aimed at the two of them and breathed a stream of flame in their direction, forcing them to split up. “Look out,” Hana warned as the two of them dodged the intense fire being exhaled by the middle head.

Ruka charged at the dragon’s legs, screaming as she did. The left head noticed her and reached down to try to bite her, prompting Ruka to swing at the left head’s face and give it a deep cut across its lower jaw, spilling its blood on the ground. She then stabbed its tongue with her sword, but then the beast bit down on the blade, causing her to engage in a brief struggle to free it from its grip. She managed to free her sword from its mouth, taking out several of the left head’s teeth in the process, before then stabbing the beast in one of its eyes. However, before she could make another hit, the left head retreated. Ruka then managed to get closer to the dragon and swung at its left leg, but she was unable to score a hit since it moved slightly to dodge the attack.

Meanwhile, Hana ran to the little girl that had been taken by the dragon, shaking her to see if she would awaken. “Damn it,” she said, not getting any response from her. “She’s out cold.” She then checked her body to see what kind of injuries she had, finding that she had bruises all over her abdomen as well as scratch marks on her upper chest. She did, however, see that she was at least still breathing. “Well, she’s still alive, at least.” Then, she felt the ground near her shake as a large rock fell just a few feet away from where she stood. She shielded the girl with her body before opening her eyes to find that the right head of the beast was picking up another large rock with its mouth and getting ready to throw it at her. “Shit!”

Ruka noticed the right head about to attack and dodged another attack from the injured left head of the dragon. As it threw the rock in the direction of Hana, she raced towards Hana and the girl and dropped her sword momentarily to drag both of them away, the arm of the unconscious girl just barely avoiding being crushed by the rock. As they all looked up at the dragon, Ruka told Hana, “That was too close!”

“The girl’s alive,” Hana then told her. “But she's badly hurt.”

“If we can hold off this beast, we can save her.”

“I just hope the others get here soon.”

…

Meanwhile, Yoshiro, Yoko, and Sayaka had all ran into the portal, looking for Ruka and Hana. Sayaka asked Yoshiro, “Arikawa-kun, do you know where they are?”

“No idea,” Yoshiro replied. “But those bodies up ahead show they’re here!”

Sure enough, they came upon the bodies of the four wolf magical beasts that Ruka and Hana had killed before confronting the Class One. Yoko looked at their bodies, all of which had been either cut open or cut into two pieces by their swords, and remarked, “Looks like they ran into a whole fucking wolf pack.”

They then all heard growling from nearby, prompting Sayaka to equip her bow with an arrow and remark, “And I think there’s still some more.”

Almost on cue, the last of the five wolves from before raced out from behind a rock and charged at the three of them, prompting Yoko to fire a bolt at it with her crossbow, striking it right in the head and instantly killing it. “There,” she then said as she reloaded her crossbow. “That should do it.”

However, at that moment, a singular throwing axe just barely missed Yoshiro’s head, prompting all of them to immediately step back in shock. “Holy fuck!” Yoshiro quickly drew his sword and yelled, “Who the fuck threw that?! Watch where you throw your God damn weapons, asshole!”

“Tough talk coming from you,” then said Shuka as she and Kaoruko, the same two girls that had kicked Kumiko out of their group, emerged from the portal. As they faced the trio, Shuka held out her right hand, which had a black glove on it, and the axe she had thrown came right back to her, narrowly missing Yoko this time. “We want dibs on this magical beast.”

Yoshiro angrily yelled at them, “Is this really the time to fight over territory and magical beasts?! This is a Class One we’re talking about here!”

“Shut up already,” Kaoruko dismissed him with. “God, boys are so annoying when they try to be like us.”

Shuka added, “Can’t you let us have one thing to ourselves? Boys get everything else. All we got is this shit.”

Sayaka remarked to herself, “So this is what Miyashita-san meant when she said not everyone likes magical huntsmen…”

“He has just as much of a right as you to hunt magical beasts,” Yoko yelled at both of them as she aimed her crossbow at them. “Also, thanks for almost taking my fucking head out with your stupid little axe, bitch!”

“I can’t believe you guys actually take orders from a boy,” Kaoruko laughed as she pulled out a military-grade carbine rifle from behind her back. “But it won’t matter when I riddle your bodies with lead.”

“Holy shit,” Yoko realized. “That’s a legit rifle!”

“You’re God damn right. I got my hands on a real M4 carbine.”

Yoshiro, angered at her verbal threat, told her, “If you threaten or attack my teammates, I’ll kill you! I won’t hesitate!”

“I doubt you even have the balls to do it.” She then aimed it squarely at Yoshiro. “Besides, today is gonna be the day we end your little group’s dominance over the area. Your families won’t even know what happened when we’re done, and we’ll get all the money for killing that Class One.”

Realizing she was about to open fire on them, Yoshiro screamed, “Get down!” As all of them fell to the ground, Yoko and Sayaka fired their own weapons at the duo, prompting Kaoruko to open fire with a three-round burst.

The group just barely dodged her shots, while Sayaka’s arrow grazed Kaoruko’s head, prompting her to yell, “Shit!” As she felt the side of her head and found a small amount of blood on her fingers, she yelled in anger, “You’re all dead!”

Yoshiro then charged at Shuka as the latter pulled out another throwing axe. He thought to himself, “She uses axes like Morikawa-senpai did, but they’re smaller and she has multiple of them. I practiced with her enough times when she was alive to know how to counteract them!” The two then began to battle each other, Shuka blocking Yoshiro’s attack the best she could with the axe.

Meanwhile, Sayaka rapidly fired two more arrows at Kaoruko before taking cover behind a rock in the grassy plain near her next to Yoko when she returned fire with two three-round bursts. The fact she had nearly been hit earlier threw her off slightly, making her shots less accurate. Yoko also fired another bolt from her crossbow from behind cover, this time firing an explosive bolt. When the bolt hit the ground in front of Kaoruko, it caused a small explosion that jolted her and kicked up dirt and dust all around, blinding her and causing her to fall to the ground. As she struggled to get up while continuing to hold onto her rifle, Sayaka fired another arrow at her, striking her in the shoulder and causing her to yell, “Agh, fuck!”

Sayaka told Yoko, “I got her with an arrow!”

“Perfect,” Yoko replied. However, just as they were about to get up, Kaoruko managed to fire another three-round burst from the ground, causing both of them to duck down. “Shit!”

As for Yoshiro and Shuka’s battle, the latter nearly struck the former in his abdomen, but he managed to dodge the blow and instead landed a blow against her right arm, leaving a deep cut in it and causing her to scream in intense pain. Yoshiro yelled, “How’s that, asshole?!”

“Fuck you,” she screamed in response before she used her left arm to swing her axe at Yoshiro, grazing his shoulder and just barely avoiding cutting into his neck. “I’ll kill you!”

Realizing he had to act, Yoshiro slashed into Shuka’s body, slicing into the side of her chest and making it almost halfway through her. The injury immediately caused Shuka to stop moving as she looked down at what Yoshiro had done to her. Yoshiro meanwhile told her, “I told you… If you ever threaten or attack my teammates, I’ll kill you!”

“You…” Shuka then coughed up blood and spat it on the ground. “No, please…”

“You brought this on yourself,” Yoshiro coldly told her before ripping the sword out of her and letting the blood in her body spew out of the wound. As she fell to the ground, she could feel the life slipping out of her, and as Yoshiro ran over to assist Yoko and Sayaka, Shuka died from severe and rapid blood loss.

Kaoruko looked over and saw that Shuka had been struck down. “Shuka!” Angered by the death of her friend, she turned her gun at Yoshiro and screamed as she fired a single shot at him despite the pain of the arrow in her shoulder, “God damn you!”

Yoshiro felt something hard and metallic hit his arm, but shrugged it off with the adrenaline pumping through his body as he swung his sword down on Kaoruko and sliced her head completely off of her body with a loud yell of rage. Sayaka and Yoko looked on in shock as Kaoruko’s body collapsed to the ground and her head rolled several times upon falling onto the grass. The latter got up from cover and ran out to see Yoshiro, yelling, “Holy shit! Arikawa! Arikawa!”

Yoshiro took several deep breaths as he regained his composure, but as he did, he felt his shoulder and touched blood. When he looked at it, he sighed and said, “Oh shit…” At that moment, a sharp pain emanated throughout his entire body from his shoulder and he fell to the ground. “Agh, motherfucker!”

Sayaka got up and ran to him as well, calling out, “Arikawa-kun!”

Yoko took a look at his shoulder and immediately realized why he was in pain. “Holy shit, he got shot! The bullet went right through!” She immediately pulled out a tourniquet she carried on her magical huntress outfit and began to apply it to his shoulder, placing it as far up from the wound as she could. “Just hang on, Arikawa. This is gonna hurt, but it’s for your own good.”

“Just do it,” he told her as a large amount of blood began to pour from the wound. “I don’t care about the pain!”

As Sayaka ran over to assist him, Tenko and Kumiko ran over, having crossed through the portal rather late. Tenko saw Sayaka and Yoko assisting Yoshiro and yelled as she ran to join them, “Yoshiro-kun!” As she reached them, she asked the duo helping him, “What the Hell happened?!”

“I got fucking shot,” Yoshiro told her before Yoko began tightening the tourniquet as quickly as she could, causing him to scream in pain. “Agh, shit! Agh! I can’t believe that bitch shot me!”

“I got bandages,” Kumiko said as she ran over, carrying a pressure dressing she had carried in her outfit. “Let me get in there!”

As Tenko bent down to help out, she asked the others, “What happened here?! Did you guys battle a beast with a gun or something?!”

“No,” Yoko told her as Yoshiro continued to yell out in pain. “Two other magical huntresses attacked us. They wanted the Class One for themselves.”

Tenko and Kumiko then looked and found the dead bodies of Kaoruko and Shuka. The latter in particular was shocked to see her now-deceased former comrades. “Holy shit. You killed them?!”

“It was either them or us,” Yoshiro said through the pain. “They were trying to kill us!”

Sayaka asked Kumiko, “Didn’t you know them?”

“They kicked me out of their team because I was trans,” she replied to her as she began to wrap up the bullet wound with the pressure dressing as tightly as she could as a backup for the tourniquet. “I never thought they’d go this far, though. Besides, we need to focus on the Class One and not them right now.”

“Guys,” Yoshiro then said to those helping him. “Kishio and Hana-senpai still need our help. I don’t need all of you helping me here. I can still walk out of here, okay?”

“I’ll help him,” Tenko immediately offered, deeply concerned about him. “You guys go find Kishio-senpai and Miyashita-senpai.”

Yoko asked her, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Tenko insisted. “Now go!”

“You heard her,” Yoshiro added as he winced in pain. “I want you, Miyamura-senpai, and Murata-senpai to go! That’s an order! Agh…”

“Alright,” Yoko replied as she got up. “Miyamura, Murata, come with me!”

“Got it,” they both said as they got up and followed her to find Ruka and Hana.

As they all left, Tenko tightened the pressure dressing and then tied it off. She then checked the wound and the tourniquet. “Alright, looks like we stopped the bleeding.” She then helped Yoshiro up onto his feet. “Come on. We need to leave.”

“Got it,” he replied. “Please, call the Agency as soon as we leave the portal.” As they both crossed through the portal and re-entered the normal world, they were met with the same little girl Ruka and Hana had seen earlier, as well as two sets of parents, both of whom were clearly panicking along with two police officers. They all turned to Tenko and Yoshiro as they staggered out of the portal, with the latter telling the group, “I got shot… I need help.”

One of the police officers replied, “You got shot?! By who?!”

“Another magical huntress,” he explained as Tenko helped him onto a bench. “Agh…”

The same police officer, clearly confused, asked him, “What’s with this magical huntress stuff? What’s going on?!”

Then, an unmarked black van pulled up to the scene, and out of it came five men dressed in business suits plus a single paramedic. Additionally, Daisuke ran over, having driven his car directly to the scene. The two police officers, at a loss for words at this point, both looked at each other, with one of them remarking to the other, “What the Hell is all this?”

“We got it from here,” Daisuke told them as he flashed a badge marking him as a member of the Protection and Research Agency. “This is a matter of the Japanese national government.”

Another police car also pulled up, and out of it emerged a chief inspector of the Kanagawa Prefectural Police Department, the same agency the two officers belonged to, as well as an assistant of his. He immediately walked over and asked Daisuke, “Any trouble from my guys, Kishio-san?”

“No,” Daisuke replied to him. “I just got here.”

One of the regular police officers turned to the chief inspector and asked him, “Sir, what’s going on here? This boy’s talking about magical whatever and saying he got shot.”

“This is a government matter,” he explained to both of the officers. “We’re all set here.”

“I’m just concerned for the boy. That’s all.”

“We have medical personnel here,” Daisuke explained to him. “He’s in good hands.”

The chief inspector ordered both of the officers, “Go back in service and clear from this call. Got it? That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” said both of the officers at the same time, having been put in their places by the chief inspector’s command.

Once the two officers left, the chief inspector told Daisuke, “If you need anything from me, let me know.”

“We should be good for no-“

“No, you won’t,” Yoshiro then interrupted him as several Agency personnel were checking him over and treating his gunshot wound. “There’s two dead bodies inside the portal.”

Daisuke, confused, replied, “Dead bodies?”

“Two other magical huntresses attacked us while we were in there. We had to fight back, and, well…”

Daisuke sighed, realizing his night had gotten much longer. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me… The paperwork I’m gonna have to do now because of this…”

As Daisuke and the chief inspector began to talk among each other once more, Yoshiro told Tenko, “You can head back in. I’m all set here, Ikezawa-san.”

“But you got shot,” Tenko replied, still worried for him.

“We got him from here,” said the paramedic affiliated with the Agency that was among the six-man team from the van. “I got an Agency ambulance and a fire department ambulance coming.”

Tenko somewhat reluctantly replied, “Okay… I’ll head in.” She then sighed and ran back into the portal to join the rest of the Fox Knights. As she raced through the portal, she thought to herself, “I still can’t believe we had to kill other magical huntresses. Today’s been a crazy day, and we haven’t even killed the Class One yet.”