Watch out for the Cliff

"What was that?"

His shoes hit the trail in a steady rhythm, the early morning sun lighting the farmland and distant hills ahead of them, haze rising from little towns down the ridge. "What was what?"

Ariake's glare drilled into him from where he'd moved to keep pace. "That man— that suit. He was using it to use glimmer somehow."

Lachlan hummed noncommittally. "Thought we already went over this."

"You clearly know something," Eden pointed out from behind him. "And I don't think he was using glimmer at all. It was too powerful for that."

"Probably wasn't, no."

"Stop being coy. Whatever that was, the SC should know about it. And we need to know what to tell them."

"I don't know anything about this guy," he retorted.

"You saw someone else like him?" Even Drake got in on the action.

Dammit, I'm too tired for this. Did they have to pick today to finally be chatty?

"Once. On TV. Back in Wilind." He mentally sighed, physically pulling just a little of his yuurei to keep the lead from creeping into his limbs as they plugged up a rise. They'd just keep poking if he didn't give them something. "Don't know if you remember the massacre in Wilind a few years back. The attackers had suits like that. They used Core-En somehow. Maybe like the Samurai cores. I don't know."

"One of them's out here?" Ariake did a double-take.

"Sure, a terrorist from six years ago marched all the way from Wilind to get here without anyone noticing." He puffed out a breath, relenting as Ariake squinted at him. "So far as I know, they all died. Those suits did something that made them go crazy and explode. If the police didn't get them first."

Or someone else. He didn't mention that.

"They must have overloaded," Eden said. "It would be hard to build controls into something like that. The excess power would have torn them apart."

"Is that how that works. Good to know."

"Have you truly been paying so little attention?" Eden huffed. "In any case, if this mystery man somehow has Ki, then the SC needs to know. We can't let Core-En escape onto the black market."

"And I guess you plan to tell them what we were up to? How we saw him?" He ducked a hanging branch. "Might as well say goodbye to our new lucky streak."

"You don't want to tell them at all?" May as well have suggested betraying the entire country from the way Eden put it.

"Didn't say that." He squinted against the light as the trail turned towards the sun. "Besides, we don't know much yet. We don't even know enough to tell if it was Core-En. I say we leave it till this afternoon. See if we can dig up anything while we're out there, and mention we saw him once we're back."

"And what if he commits his own massacre in the meantime?"

He clenched his jaw, beating back visions of screaming crowds cut down by impossibly sharp blades and blazed to ashes under fiery beams. Those images could stay in the night where they belonged. "He won't. Not after we saw him. He'll be lying low."

And if he turned out to be wrong, well....

Add it to my sins.

_________________

Turned out a whole two hours of blissfully dreamless sleep didn't leave him all that awake for the Samurai part of Samurai training.

"Gaijin!"

Slamming straight into the ground and digging a furrow twice the length of his Samurai, he barely avoided taking out Eden, wincing at the burning itch that shredded across his shoulderblades. "Ughf—"

"Could you pay any less attention to your surroundings?"

"'Pologies," he huffed out, planting the barrel of his laser rifle on his knee and popping a shot off at the glimmer construction of an oni currently terrorising them. The shot snapped off a horn, turning its attention back to him instead of trying to flatten Drake. Fantastic. "Ah hell."

Angry and none the worse for wear, it leapt almost faster than he could haul his Samurai out of the way. Half-stumbling through a roll he tried to manipulate but got hung up on the feeling of knees and arms, he still made it, somehow. Barely.

Its landing shook the ground, rattling him even inside inside his core, and his summoned handgun did about nothing. Except distract it enough for Ariake to leap in and stab it through the arm.

It didn't roar. It couldn't. But it made a decent show of it, swinging around to try and snatch the other Samurai's head—

"Nokami!" He snapped.

Surprisingly enough, an inferno actually answered him, crashing into the thing's back in a roaring wave of brilliant light.

No screaming crowds here. No masks and sleek suits. Hissing in a quiet breath, he smiled tight enough to crack, tracking it as it leapt sideways, light streaming through glowing fissures. Half an eye stayed on the rest of his team. "Drake, I'll snipe it, you can catch it with a good hit on the back."

"Sure."

Pulling up his rifle again, he pushed up the power level on both throttles to three, bracing for the wave to hit, and grinding his teeth when it smacked into him anyway. A storm of buzzing wasps trying to drill up his spine.

Goddammit, take the list of things he hated and add that as bastard number three.

"Lachlan?"

"Fine." Sucking air into lungs currently trying to breathe backwards, he let the snap of perfect sync yank his awareness into the Samurai instead. And the oni leaping at Ariake again. Dammit.

His fingers tightened. Clenching his buzzing teeth, he snapped off a good solid hit on its shoulder, making it turn on him. And here comes the hammer....

Wickedly curved swords jutted straight through the chest, tearing it apart in an explosion of sparks. In an instant, the whole thing fizzled, glittering motes winking out as the wind brushed them away.

Bringing the throttles back down to one, he let out a long breath. Second time successful. Not bad.

Dismissing his rifle, he flexed his physical hands—still a weird sensation, having two pairs. "Good work. Barely got any damage this time."

"Yes, a good thing none of us froze, this time," Eden said pointedly.

"I wasn't expecting it to—" Ariake's explosive breath came through clearly. "Would you just drop it?"

"First round was a fluke, don't worry about it."

"Hirano's team managed it perfectly the first time around."

"From what I hear, he knows everyone on campus and has worked with them at least twice," Lachlan pointed out. "We'll get there if we work on working together."

Someone scoffed, or maybe two someones, and he chose to ignore it as he lead the march back to the hangar where the next team was set to come out. They were doing better. A couple hours of drills followed by a little practice session with an "oni", and they'd managed it without killing each other. Not a bad morning.

Kyubi briefed them, pointing out a few mistakes with a clinical knife, before balancing it with praise on how they'd cornered the "oni". Then promptly shuffled them off to lunch.

In the afternoon, the fun began.

Turned out they'd won their little bid, earning a top assignment that came with a nice discount on any related jobs should they choose to pursue them. Points galore, and a chance to poke around after their mystery masked man.

So he thought.

A couple days later, coughing around a glowing blade stuck in his lung as he hung five stories above the ground, grinding too-sharp teeth, he got to reflect on his own stupidity. Turns out—

—you should be... careful what you wish for.