The Last Hurdle

 This was it. No looking back. No regrets.

Summoning his rifle, Lachlan clicked up to four, letting the other Samurai bleed into awareness, teams Seven and Twelve zipping ahead in an effort to get there first, Hirano cruising behind, strangely enough. "Alright, let's stick close— stay below the horizon. This may be a demolitions zone, but levelling a block might take a few points off. And we don't know what else could be out there."

He took half a note of the acknowledgements, frowning at the sense of Hirano's team hanging back. "What're you trying to pull?" He muttered.

In response, a flash of light split the heavens.

"What the hell?!"

"Gh!"

Damn. Distantly, he felt the rest scatter with him, diving into a weed-consumed street. "Was anyone hit?"

"Shoulder," Drake hissed, and his Samurai's presence lit up a moment later. "It's fine."

Where the hell had it come from, though? He cast his awareness out, but in all the chaos he couldn't feel much more than a hazy something at the edge of awareness. Didn't feel like a glimmer construct. Those couldn't form beams, anyway.

"Above!" Eden snapped. "Enemy in the sky!"

"Hirano?" He snapped his sights up, searching the hazy sky. Where....

"No. Unknown."

There. He focused on an unfamiliar, dimmed Samurai hovering in the sky, wielding a wickedly-sleek rifle of its own. Whoever it was, he'd gladly take it on in a duel.

Throwing both throttles forward, his eye locking on the chest just above the core, he burned straight into Spirit-state, holding through the jolt forcing him to meld with his yuurei. Just like shooting the eye of a little wood target. He breathed out half a breath and pulled the trigger.

His own lightning strike cracked out, sizzling hot; bang on centre.

"Did you get it? Damn, I think you took it out!"

"All in a day's work." He smiled as the Samurai shattered and the core dropped like a stone. "Be ready to catch it in case its pilot can't correct."

They didn't need to worry. It flashed back to life almost before he finished the sentence, blazing into Spirit-state.

And aiming straight at him.

Oh shite. He froze despite himself for just a half-second as the glow of a miniature sun formed inside a barrel. Violent red flared across his vision, his limbs locked; too late.

A beam cut through the dusk.

He blinked away a half-heard scream prickling up his spine, clenching sharpened teeth and yanking his own Samurai away while the other was busy dodging. Damn hallucinations— Spirit-state always testing him every step of the way.

"—ve, gaijin!"

"Sorry." Holding firmly to the handles with clawed fingers, he honed his focus to a grit-toothed knife's edge, straight through the flickers and flutters in the corner of his eye. Didn't pay to lose focus here. "Little lapse."

"You can't afford to freeze. Not now."

"Just caught me by surprise, that's all." The flicker of an urge to growl also caught him by surprise as he levelled his rifle, leaping up the side of the building ahead of a shot and cracking another of his own into the other's helmet. He stuffed it down. Blasted final mission nerves.

Two smiling faces flickered through his vision, and he shoved them away too. Not now. No looking back.

"We need to keep moving." He pulled both throttles back down, leaving Spirit-state and nearly choking as it abruptly loosened its hold. "Need... need to get to the target. Go dark."

"What's wrong?" Ariake didn't even bother to hide his worry.

He took a deep breath, forcing his runes to dim. "Nothing. Spirit-state just playing up. Don't know why."

"Well then get it to stop playing up," Eden snapped. "This is our final mission, gaijin. If we want Kaijan, then we can't fail now."

As if he suddenly didn't want Kaijan now it was at their fingertips. Of course he did. Of course he did.

"I know that." He hissed in, swallowing his own snap too late, banishing the sea and a little village lingering like a familiar scent, and huffed out a breath as they all dove into the streets again, flitting ahead of their sniper friend. "Blessed sea, you can be an arse when you're stressed, Eddy."

"I would argue that I'm not the stressed one, here."

"Children, children," Drake mocked, doing a decent impression of Eden's own voice.

"You're not helping, Drake," Lachlan warned. "People, we need to pull our act together, here. We've spent too long building up our teamwork to have it fall apart now."

"Roku's right," came Ariake's unexpected support. "We're in this together."

He smiled lopsidedly, keeping an eye on their rear. "Might just make me shed a tear, Ari-kun. Thank you."

Over Ariake's half-hissing grumble with all the heat leaked straight out of it, he took note of Seven and Twelve battling more Samurai over to their right, and One.... He couldn't feel them at all. Had they dropped to notch-one?

"He knew this was going to happen," he muttered, throwing a quick glance up and ducking around a building into an almost-alleyway just ahead of a stinging shot.

"I'm not surprised he managed to find out. Ariake thought they might throw something like this at us."

"I thought it would be constructs. Oni or something. Not a Samurai team."

"Wolves set among the sheep. And unlike them, we're not allowed to regenerate." He fired a shot back, hitting it in the chest, and darted off again on light glimmer feet. "The river runs through this area, doesn't it?"

"To the north-west."

"Alright, here's what we're going to do." He threw his Samurai down a longer street like a cannonball. "I'll take its attention, and you lot dive into the river on notch-one. It winds north before heading back out of the mission zone if I've got my directions right. You can follow it till it does, and I'll meet back up with you after shaking him."

"Will this require Spirit-state?"

"I'll be fine." He could smell the scent of the river through the dark, eerily empty weed-strewn streets. Time to split. "No time to argue. Heading off!"

Taking a deep breath, abruptly breaking down a side-street to the right, he shoved up to four, then five. Come on. No more funny business.

Target locked, trigger; fire.

Spirit-state flared through him, pumping glitter straight into his veins and lighting him up like a bonfire, the battlefield opening up in his mind like blind eyes seeing light again. Leaping up onto a squat, crumbling building nearly consumed by bushes, he whirled and shot straight to the core.

Its chest flared, his next shot glancing off as the glowing Samurai slipped to the side, pulsing a shot back at him. This time he didn't flinch.

I know what I'm doing. He flicked up a solid shield, shooting through the exploding shards as it shattered and landing another hit, this one above the core, carefully avoiding the urge to hit that cracked centre. I'm not stumbling here.

It summoned a sword, blurring straight for him, and red crawled at the corners of his vision. Blasted hallucinations.

He bared his teeth, snapping aside and throwing a shard of half-formed light out as it flashed past.

Its sword flashed even as its head cracked, and cut off his arm.

A tingling vice caught him by the bone, and he choked, barely twitching his Samurai back as glitter cascaded through his vision and he doubled-over, clutching his arm, swinging out with claws and catching bright armour. Digging claws in through his glove. It didn't hurt. It did hurt.

"Agh!" He slammed both hands into the throttles, teeth bared, and pushed it to six, his arm flashing back to life. Summoning two handguns, he blasted the Samurai straight in the core as it swept back, the rabid snarl of a wolf filling his ears.

A jagged black blade missed him, smashing through an old house with a rickety staircase, a little family still inside. And a fanged shadow breathed in his ear.

He roared, snapping forward and tearing teeth around its head, pulling the both of them off and crashing into the ground. Glitters spurted between cracks. Fangs scraped down, digging in— crunching—

"Lockie."

A choked breath shuddered into his lungs, the taste of blood on his tongue, and he snapped back to himself just as a sword hummed for his head.

"Roku!"

Lunging back, panting raggedly, he summoned a rifle into shaking hands and blasted a shot straight above the core, seeing the other's dodge before it happened. The Samurai shattered again.

And in the blink of an eye, he threw his own back so fast that the G-forces slammed his shuddering body against its restraints to remind him it still existed, yanking both throttles down to one. The jarring clicks went straight through his bones, and he dragged in air like a drowning man as the hammering in his veins fled to nothing, dumping his Samurai straight into a darkly-glinting stretch of river.

For a moment he just let it sink, watching a warped version of the surface ripple above him, distantly feeling the soft impact of the bottom echo through his Samurai's back into his own.

This was not going well. At all.

"Answer me!"

"Gaijin, if you do not respond, I will shoot you myself."

"Still alive," he rasped. "I'm at the top of the river. Think I managed to drop him."

Drake audibly sighed in relief, some hissed crackle coming from Ariake. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Nerves." Vague impressions approached through the water, and he swung his Samurai up off the bottom. "Got the jitters. Awful thing. Better hope it's not contagious."

"Perhaps it's best if you stay out of Spirit-state for the rest of the mission?"

"Can't make any promises, sadly." He pushed up, quietly exiting the surface and slinking his way into the skeletal shadow of a decomposing industrial something-or-other. Three other shadows appeared and did the same a moment later. "You'll just have to live with me breaking your eardrums."

"You need to focus. Whatever it is that has you twisted up in knots, 'jitters' or whatever, forget about it."

"Wish it was that easy." He led the quiet prowl through half-open lots, old buildings with shattered windows hopefully hiding them from view. Couldn't tell where Hirano was, and couldn't rely on much except sight or hearing to catch a Samurai flitting around nearby.

They ghosted through the gathering darkness, moving far slower than he'd like.

"At the rear! Samurai approaching!"

They all scuttled for cover like cockroaches. He swore quietly, managing to slip in through a gaping doorway into an old brick warehouse, carefully not bumping any support struts, and listened with bated breath as a faint whoosh flew past the dim patches of sky visible through the ceiling. "Anyone have eyes on it?"

"I think it's gone," Ariake said.

"Good." He turned, glancing into the shadows, some half-formed sense of unease prickling at the back of his neck. "Best to check, just in case it's waiting to ambush us—"

In the darkness at the back of the warehouse, something too big to be a creature shifted, a shadow unfolding.

And a pair of faintly-glinting eyes in a shadowy helmet locked onto his.