How bothersome.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I heard my three comrades’ footsteps lead away from me on the floor above. Honestly, that girl. If given the chance she’d have died with me. It’s as if she doesn’t understand how important she truly is.

Our first interaction with that awful woman proved one thing: none but Tokiko could stand against her. From that moment on, I was determined to ensure that the two of them would come face to face without interruptions, even at the cost of my life. Aki was strong, that much was abundantly clear. But I believed in Toki, truly, from the bottom of my heart.

After all, it was her that opened my eyes to reality. That violence for the sake of violence was foolish. That strength and kindness together are the true avenue to victory.

For the sake of that lesson, I would buy her whatever time I could. I had no other option.

I drew my sword and waited in the centre of the hallway. We had climbed quite a few floors, but I could already hear them growing closer.

Ten sets of footsteps. Twenty. Fifty.

Soon enough, there were too many people approaching for me to estimate, even with my enhanced hearing. The time between first hearing them and them reaching my floor cannot have been more than a minute, yet it felt like an eternity. Hearing the instrument of my undoing slowly approach me.

They were three floors below me.

I drew my sword.

Two floors below.

I raised it next to my head like a javelin.

One floor.

I breathed in. Calmed my nerves. Focused everything I had into controlling my cybernetic arm.

The door burst open.

I threw the sword with all the might at my disposal. Muscular, magical and mechanical. It pierced cleanly through the first few MPs in the middle of the pack, knocking those next to them backwards with its sonic boom.

I teleported to catch the sword in mid air, spinning a full three hundred and sixty degrees and bisecting the MPs to my sides. In two quick moves, I had solved nine of the problems I was facing.

It hardly made a dent in their numbers.

The MPs still ascending the stairs opened fire. The staircase was deafening as the sound of hundreds of rounds firing and ricocheting echoed around the barren metal walls.

I turned incorporeal and retreated to the hallway. The railings of the staircase I was standing on moments prior were heavily damaged by gunfire. I heard many of the MPs fall to the ground to avoid the ricochet of their own rounds.

I drifted upwards above the doorway. I didn’t have enough experience to maintain it indefinitely like Higgs, but our merging had allowed me to move completely freely in light-form. It was an incredibly useful power. A shame I would likely use it only once.

A few moments passed, and the wave of MPs once again burst through the doors. I waited and listened to the steps. A third of them passed me. A half. Three quarters.

“Hey, why can’t I open this damn door?”

Just as the first of the soldiers reached the door Ms Denka had sealed, the last few stepped through the threshold beneath me.

I changed my form back to matter and seized my opportunity. I landed behind the few at the back, quiet enough that only those close to them heard me. What everybody else heard, however, were the sounds of their colleagues being rent in twain.

I had to make the initial attack fast to capitalise on the confusion. The first cut was sloppy, but that hardly mattered when it had force enough to cut cleanly through three people. With momentum on my side, I carved my way through the next groups before giving any opportunity to react. They had kindly done me the favour of moving in an orderly three-wide line. Allowing me to attack multiple targets at once and preventing any but the closest three from firing on me? They were simply spoiling me.

I managed to cut my way through almost half of the MPs before the presumed commanding officer frantically called them to fan out. In the stumbling that followed I managed to secure a handful more terminations before oncoming gunfire forced me to return to my incorporeal form.

Wasting even a second would allow them to form ranks. I had to keep the momentum I had gained in their confusion.

I moved into the centre of the soldiers amassing on the left side. I returned to my corporeal form just long enough to cut a full circle with my sword, then returned to incorporeality. The resulting confusion saw shots fired at where once I had stood, and a number of MPs were killed by crossfire from their own allies.

I materialised again, this time on the right side, and once again cut a number of foes down in a single sweep. Once more, gunfire rained and several were killed by friendly fire.

I repeated this rhythm once again. Materialise. Attack. Disappear. Their numbers thinned quickly. The commanding officer bellowed commands to his steadily depleting force, but they fell upon deaf ears as panic swept the company.

I was finding little to no trouble at all dealing with my foes, but I was feeling the fatigue of magic overuse on my body more and more with each sweep. I would have to end it quickly.

I changed my approach.

This time, as I rematerialised, I did not blink back out immediately. I stayed low to the ground and sprinted through a group of soldiers with all the speed I could muster. A bullet grazed my neck as I bisected my enemies, but no small wound would dull my momentum. I turned and moved back the other way, blinking incorporeal briefly to dodge oncoming fire. One sweep killed or dismembered three of the remaining foes. The next took out a further two.

I blinked once more, a bullet passing straight through where my neck had been milliseconds prior. I returned to corporeal form and cut the gunman in half.

There were fewer than twenty remaining.

I made another pass.

Thirteen.

I re-emerged in the centre of the survivors.

Nine.

The left half fell to a single cut.

Five.

Three were sliced before they could scatter.

Two.

The commanding officer watched as his final ally was split at the waist.

One.

My blade came to rest in his heart.

“Haa… shoulda- argh!-” He spat the blood welling up in his mouth and tensed in pain. “...shoulda known we stood no chance. But you were gettin’ slow there at the end. Least we… softened you up… for ‘em…”

“‘Them?’ Who exactly it th-”

Footsteps. Behind me. Two sets only.

I retraced my sword from the soldier’s chest, turned and hurled it with all my might.

The girl with the egregiously large hammer simply moved her head and watched it sail past her.

“Jeez, pumpkin. Keep throwin’ around knives like that, you’re gonna take someone’s eye out.”

“I had hoped for the real Ronin as my first meal, but I suppose you’ll make an acceptable entree before the main dish.”

Ah. Now I understood why they would send waves of grunts against an insurmountable foe.

It was to wear me down.

It was to make me easy pickings for the two girls I had hoped never to see again.

Z and W.

How bothersome.