Blue
Jeans Samurai
#2
– The Unerring Archer! An Unlikely Alliance!
的確アーチャー！まずない同盟！
“So,
let me get this straight, Lieutenant Hammer,” said a
dangerously-cool voice, “You and Lieutenant Trigger, both of you
seasoned soldiers with years of experience and training, had your
squadrons systematically slain by a kid with arrows and a freak with
a sword?”
Lieutenant
Hammer, still nursing the agony in his bleeding, handless wrists,
could only nod, still shaking from yesterday's confrontation. Simply
thinking about the boundless skill of the jeans-clad swordsman made
him want to cry, and it took every ounce of strength he had not to.
There
was a pause in the Administrator's Quarters of the Pistol Officer
Camp of the Capital Continent (formerly North America). Hammer shook
with fear and shame the entire time, until the Capital Continent
Pistol Administrator, General Smith Wesson, spoke up again, louder
than before, “You and Trigger, two of my finest men, were outwitted
and outfought by a dissident with a sharp metal stick!”
“But,
General, you don't understand!” Hammer wailed, still squeezing the
bandaged stumps under his armpits, “He was monstrous! His skill,
its like nothing we've yet seen! He fought like a demon!”
“Am
I to understand,” General Wesson's voice went up higher, “that
two squads of four Pistols were killed by these two piteous cretins,
except for you?! That you allowed Lieutenant Trigger to be shot to
death by his own men?! AND ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, YOU HAD THE
AUDACITY TO SHOW YOUR FACE IN MY CAMP AFTER THIS FAILURE!?!?!””
“Please,
sir!” Hammer whined, now fully cowering, “Give me another chance!
With a bigger squadron of better-trained Pistols, I'm sure I can find
that swordsman and make him pay for defying FIRENIGHT law! Please,
General, I beg you! Give me another chance, and I swear I will find
him and destroy him!”
Seated
in his chair, General Wesson stood and walked, pacing slowly around
his office and occasionally taking quick glances at Lieutenant
Hammer. After doing this for a few seconds, he stopped, stood
silently for a moment, and spoke softly once again, “You will not
be given another chance, and there are three reasons for this.”
Hammer
shuddered, fresh disappointment lost amidst the continued feelings of
fear and shame. “A-a-and,” he tried to stutter, “a-and
th-those reasons are?”
Wesson
held up one finger on his right hand to signify, “One: I will be
attending to our young samurai friend myself. From what you tell me,
he is frighteningly well-skilled, and obviously only a man of my
military genius can stop him.”
“No,
General, no!” Hammer protested, “His strength is unparalleled!
You must take me with you! I've seen the way he fights! You will be
well-prepared if you have me with you—”
“Two!”
General Wesson interrupted, sticking up a second finger to go with
the first, “You no longer have hands. This means that you will
never be able to hold a gun again. To me, this makes you even lower
than the DDZ citizens.”
“But
sir!” Hammer continued to argue, “If I may be granted cybernetic
prosthetic hands, I'll be able to hold a gun! And I will be more than
ready to help you kill this defiant worm—”
“And
three,” Wesson concluded, quickly whipping out a .38 caliber
handgun and pointing it between Hammer's eyes, “You, sadly, will
not live long enough to see combat again.”
Lieutenant
Hammer simply squealed one last time before Wesson pulled the
trigger. The gunshot was ear-splitting in the small office, and
Hammer's body stiffened as the bullet was injected into his head,
blowing out the back of his skull and spraying blood, gore, and brain
against the wall behind him. The lieutenant dropped to his knees,
then fell forward on his face (Wesson, turning his back toward his
executed underling, stepped to the side to allow the body room to
fall). Blood oozed from the hole in his head and stained the carpet
underneath him.
Wesson
then calmly walked over to his desk and pressed the InterGram button
(a device, restricted only to FIRENIGHT elite, that acted like an
intercom, but worked like a hologram projector), and immediately, a
miniature hologram of his secretary, a thin blonde woman, popped up
on top of his desk. “Yes, General?” she said in a flighty,
sing-songy voice.
“Have
my weaponry prepared,” the General commanded, “and gather a
platoon of my finest shooters for a special mission tomorrow.”
Glancing at Hammer's handless corpse, he quickly added, “And take a
note: whoever has the lowest performance after mission completion
must clean the blood from by office and remove the body of Lieutenant
Hammer.”
Not
missing a beat, the secretary's hologram logged away everything
Wesson said. “Understood, sir!” she replied with fervent pep
just before the hologram blinked out of existence. Wesson then went
out to the Intelligence Division of the Camp, to see if they had
dredged up any information on a pair of DDZ rogues, one bearing a bow
and arrows, the other wielding a sword.
*
* * * *
It
had been two days since the last Pistol raid, in which Lieutenant
Trigger and his entire squad was killed, and Lieutenant Hammer was
sent screaming, handless and bloody, out of Luster Park. Today was a
day to close shop, and that left Blue Jeans free to roam, gathering
materials for his forge at home and providing assistance whenever he
could to his neighbors. Today would mean a particular level of
caution; now that the Pistols had had a sufficient enough time to
prepare, no doubt they would have more men deployed throughout Luster
Park, on the lookout for a sword-wielding outlaw. Blue Jeans had
killed Pistols before, but never as many in one sitting as he had
that day, and that would surely not go unnoticed.
Or
unpunished.
Calmly
making his way down Beryllium Way, Blue Jeans heard sounds of
struggling, faint and far away, but just clear enough to be heard.
Taking a turn from Beryllium Way to North Iron Street, Blue Jeans
followed the sounds closely, until he was one street away from where
he began—Aluminum Road, the street in which he had killed seven
Pistol soldiers two days ago. When Blue Jeans turned onto this road,
he quickly stole behind a building for cover; the sight that greeted
his eyes horrified him.
Dozens
of Pistol troops, armed to the teeth, were wresting people from their
homes all along the street and dragging them out onto the asphalt.
Men fought the Pistols and received a beating from seven or eight of
them at a time as punishment. Women who screamed and cried received
slaps and kicks in a never-ending back-and-forth cadence. Children
were lifted up off the ground (some even pried out of their parents'
arms) and thrown bodily into the road, getting badly scraped up and
bruised. Blue Jeans was horrified to see the family he'd saved two
days ago, dragged, beaten and thrown into the street like dogs. The
boy attempted to fight them, but was easily subdued with a kick in
the face. He was thrown back by the force of the kick, his nose bled
copiously, and the entire right side of his face was scraped and
bruised. His mother and sister screamed in fear as they saw this,
louder when they witnessed, for the second time that week, the father
and eldest boy attacked by far too many opponents for them to handle.
Walking
amongst the Pistols and their victims, taking in the carnage and
brutality around him, was a tall, thin man with a thick, black
mustache and a series of white stripes around his upper left sleeve,
signifying a high rank. He wore two large, thick ammunition belts
crossed over his chest, but instead of bullets, they were lined with
handguns—at least a dozen, from what Blue Jeans could see. He
smiled grimly as he surveyed his subordinates, unblinking as one
young boy's arm audibly splintered as it hit the pavement. The
arrogant authority he carried himself with was a more obvious
indication than the stripes; Blue Jeans was certain that this man was
running this unscheduled raid.
For
what purpose, he was even surer he knew.
Once
the mayhem had slowed to a dull murmur, one Pistol soldier approached
his superior officer with only half the smirk. “All the citizens
have been ousted, sir!” the Pistol called out with all the fervor
of a well-disciplined soldier, complimenting it with a steady salute
(one finger to the temple, then arm straightened out and finger
pointed forward, thumb up, in the style of a gun).
“Good
work, men!” the high officer called all around him, “Now, send
the word out through the P.A. system. See to it that these two
rogues, the archer and the swordsman—especially the
swordsman—are found and brought before me! If they don't show up,
then one person in this crowd will die every five minutes he fails to
arrive! So I have said it, so it will be done!”
“Sir,
yes, sir!” the entire Pistol platoon chanted back, and over half of
them dispersed, leaving about ten left to remain with the crowd and
carry out the high officer's wishes when necessary.
Blue
Jeans saw a few coming up the street toward him, and hid on the stoop
of the building on the corner until they were out of sight. Once
they were at a decent distance, Blue Jeans wasted no time in
confronting this soldier-tyrant with his crimes. Jumping from the
stoop and into the street, Blue Jeans stared straight ahead at the
head officer and shouted, “Were you looking for me?!”
The
senior Pistol and his ten-man squadron turned at the sound of his
voice. The lesser soldiers reached for their weapons, but the high
officer merely grinned haughtily. “So,” his voice matched his
grin, “we finally meet, swordsman. I must admit, you're not nearly
as flashy as was described to me.”
Blue
Jeans merely grinned back, “I don't rely on any flash,” he pushed
up the hilt of his sword slightly from its sheath with his thumb,
“except the flash of my blade.”
“So
I noticed,” the high officer retorted, “Lieutenant Hammer, the
man whom you, uh . . .” he hesitated for a moment before insisting
on the pun, “. . . disarmed the other day, was most
insistent on your skill. Pity he couldn't be here to see me take over
our battle, but in the end, a corpse is useless to me on the
battlefield.”
Blue
Jeans' eyes widened slightly. This was an obvious hint to the final
fate of Lieutenant Hammer. The surprise left Blue Jeans as soon as
it came though, “I suppose I can't be shocked at this. Pistols
aren't above anything, including killing their own.”
The
high officer's smirk widened, “Oh, I prefer to present it as a
preview. You should thank me for giving you at least a description of
what General Smith Wesson is capable of!” He then raised one hand,
flat and palm forward, “Men! Show him what happens to traitors of
FIRENIGHT!” Wesson's hand balled into a fist, and the Pistol
troops marched forward, unholstering their guns . . .
Suddenly,
a flare of light exploded in the sky above them. “Give us your
best shot, bitches!” shouted a zealous voice.
Bustle
among the Pistols started immediately. They looked down at the
people in the street as they lay bleeding and injured, wondering if
the voice that sounded off (as well as the flare that exploded above
them) belonged to one of them. They stared up at the higher floors
of buildings to see if they were under attack from above. They even
glanced at the end of the street to see if it was their
sword-wielding opponent utilizing a distraction.
Blue
Jeans utilized it all right, and resolved to thank whoever provided
it for him.
With
a quick motion, Blue Jeans unsheathed his sword and charged into the
street. At once the Pistols opened fire, and Blue Jeans swiftly
slipped into an alley between two buildings. Every shot (about three
or four per Pistol, making close to forty altogether) was a miss.
“Don't
just stand there!” Wesson bellowed, “Follow him!” He gestured
to the five men closest to him, “You men, into that alley!” then
gestured to the other five, “You, cut him off from the other side!”
The first five followed Blue Jeans into the alley, while the other
five rushed toward the alley on the other side. As they walked
though, three of them suddenly cried out in pain and collapsed; three
arrows had flown in from out of nowhere and picked them off in the
head, neck or back, killing them instantly.
“WHAT?!”
Wesson shouted as the other two stopped, “What is going on! Who
keeps doing that!!?!” He then froze for a moment, “Wait . . . .
that's him! That's the archer who helped the swordsman the other
day!” He then bellowed more orders to his soldiers, “Men! Find
cover, and make out where you find that rogue and his arrows!” The
last two men ducked low into a stoop of one of the buildings, while
the five who went after Blue Jeans pressed themselves against the
wall just inside the alley. When one Pistol was too slow and took an
arrow as punishment, Wesson found the window from which the arrows
were fired, and pulled one of his many handguns, firing eight rounds
at a window across the street and two buildings down from where Blue
Jeans hid.
“THERE!!”
Wesson pointed at the window, “There he is! Men, converge and
apprehend him!” The four remaining Pistols on one side and the two
remaining Pistols on the other raced back into the street, zigzagging
and keeping away from the mystery archer's arrows as often as
possible.
They
were too late, as well.
Bursting
from the front door of the building behind which Blue Jeans hid, the
swordsman himself sprang out and attacked, performing a powerful
horizontal slash that killed two Pistols at once before they even
knew what hit them. By the time the other two were alerted to his
presence, Blue Jeans performed a forceful uppercut on one and brought
the blade back down on the other in the same motion, and the four
remaining Pistols on his end of the street lay bleeding on the
concrete.
Wesson
looked shocked, “WHAT!?! B-but . . . . but how?! How did you do
that!?!”
Blue
Jeans smirked as he whipped his sword to one side, flinging off a
layer of blood. “Didn't your men see the side door in the alley?”
he said confidently, “A short detour back to the street, that's
all. It's not the type of breaking and entering you're used
to, but it works in a pinch.”
Wesson
shook with fury, “Treason! Nobody attacks the officers of
FIRENIGHT! You will pay for your crimes!” He turned to his two
remaining subordinates, “Kill them! The street rats! Kill them
all!”
The
Pistols grunted their consent, and cocked the hammers on their
firearms, readying to blow their victims away, one by one. Just when
they were about to comply, another arrow sailed in from nowhere and
made useless contact with the ground. However, instead of just
sticking into the asphalt, this arrow suddenly projected a thick
blanket of smoke all across the street. The black blanket obscured
everything; the Pistols, Wesson, Blue Jeans, and the DDZ citizens
were erased from view by the choking blackness.
Blue
Jeans struggled to see through the smoke, and above him, just beyond
the smoke's obscurity, he saw the sniper's window, and the archer
using it emerged at last. The daring marksman jumped out of the
window and, launching another arrow to which a rope was fastened, he
created a grappling hook that attached to the side of another
building. Grabbing the other end of the attached rope, the archer
swung down into the black cloud and onto the street, rolling over
several times to soften his fall.
“Don't
waste time, my man!” the archer called out through a gas mask,
throwing Blue Jeans a mask of his own, “That smoke ain't gonna
last! We got to get these folks outta the street, now!”
Blue
Jeans was impressed by the archer's showmanship, but complied with
his careful planning, “Right!” Quickly donning the mask, Blue
Jeans ran alongside the archer and helped him escort the wounded
citizens out of Aluminum Road. The elderly, the young, and the
overly injured had to be carried, and the two made sure to take as
many people into groups as possible and carry them out en masse.
Blue Jeans even met the family he'd defended two days ago, but
wouldn't let them waste time with gratitude and insisted they run far
away; the smoke was indeed fading fast.
At
last the smoke dispersed, and the remaining two Pistol soldiers were
shocked to find that their targets were gone. Taking off their gas
masks, Blue Jeans and the archer prepped their weapons for combat.
The two Pistols fired, and Blue Jeans charged, dodging some shots and
deflecting others with the broad side of his sword. Blue Jeans flew
fast and stabbed, ending the first Pistol's life before he had a
chance to shoot again. The Pistol farther back ran out of rounds and
attempted to reload, but was killed by an arrow in the chest before
he could. The archer had drawn his bow and fired just before Blue
Jeans' sword struck. All of the Pistol soldiers were dead.
All
but one.
General
Wesson, still smirking confidently, this time had a very good reason
to; struggling and sobbing in his grip was the little girl belonging
to the family Blue Jeans had saved. She screamed and cried and tried
with all her might to pull her arm out of his grasp, but it wasn't
enough. Even less so when Wesson pulled out one of his innumerable
handguns and pressed it against her head.
“Don't
make me do something you'll regret, swordsman!” Wesson
resumed his superior smirk, “All you must do is surrender your
sword and submit to arrest immediately, and the girl will live.”
Blue
Jeans felt a grimace of rage cover his face. “You . . .” he
began, not sure if any insult he could use would be low and degrading
enough for him, “. . . . you don't intend to follow through with
that promise at all, do you?”
Wesson
continued to grin haughtily, “You really won't know until you try
it, swordsman.” He then cocked the hammer and slowly squeezed the
trigger, “But whether I do it or not, you can be sure of what
happens if you don't. Don't want to see that, do you?” The girl
only screamed and sobbed louder, helpless with fear.
Blue
Jeans' sword arm quivered in fury, but he knew better. Even with his
incredible speed, he couldn't risk losing this little girl if he was
only an instant too late. Glancing between the sobbing girl and his
beloved sword, he made the decision he knew had to be made. Closing
his eyes and pulling his arm back, he threw, and his sword flew
through the air to his left side, clattering miserably to the ground.
Wesson's
gloating grin became wider and showed perfect white teeth. “Good
choice, dissident,” he snapped, “Now, I feel I must punish you
for trusting an opponent's word. I think the sight of this girl's
brains on the pavement will do that nicely.”
The
girl screamed deafeningly and Blue Jeans gasped, knowing he should
have seen in coming. Prepared to move as Wesson pulled the trigger,
Blue Jeans was stopped by a shocking sight; a blur of silver flying
in from his left, striking the gun right out of Wesson's hand, and
sticking it into the side of the building behind him, piercing the
weapon through the barrel. The shock, for Blue Jeans, came from the
fact that this silvery projectile was his own sword.
The
shock for Wesson, obviously, was being disarmed so easily, and
through such an unorthodox method. Both turned to see the mysterious
marksman, striking the pose of an archer with one less arrow. “Twang
don't miss, baby,” he returned Wesson's earlier smirk.
Shaking
off the surprise a second earlier than Wesson, Blue Jeans charged
forward just as Wesson pulled yet another handgun from his magazine.
Before Wesson pulled the trigger, he received a knee in the stomach,
throwing his aim and making a bullet ricochet off a streetlight and
crash through a window (the girl still screamed). Blue Jeans then
threw a hard punch into Wesson's elbow joint, shattering the joint,
making Wesson scream as well, and making his grip over the girl's arm
slacken. When the girl took the opportunity to run, Blue Jeans
followed up with a kick to the chest that forced Wesson back,
throwing his new gun out of his hand. Both fighters made for their
weapons at the same time; Wesson pulled yet another handgun, while
Blue Jeans wrenched his sword from the bricks. As soon as the blade
was free, it flew in a wide diagonal arc that struck the gun from
Wesson's hand once again. A split-second later, the blade came back
up along the same path, but Wesson had learned by now, and backed up
a few inches to dodge. It worked, but only slightly; the tip of the
sword nicked his face, carving a deep cut that went from just to the
left of the bridge of his nose, over his eye, and ended above his
left temple.
Wesson
bellowed in pain and fell on his back. Blue Jeans pointed his sword
directly at Wesson's face, ready to finish the job if he had to.
Wesson backed up slowly, only to run into an obstruction. When he
looked up, the archer looked down on him over the length of another
arrow, pulled back and ready to find flesh to dig into.
Blue
Jeans' voice was forceful and commanding, “You've lost, Wesson. No
more blood need be shed today. If you leave now and never come back,
we will not pursue you.”
His
aim unwavering, the archer eyed Wesson with contempt. “You heard
the man,” he said roughly, the stretch of his bowstring sounding
off loud and clear.
General
Wesson scowled, and slowly got to his feet, both warriors' weapons
still aimed directly at him. After a brief pause consisting entirely
of fuming stares, both sides unwavering, Wesson finally spoke, “You
have half my word. I will leave now. But I will be back. Did you not
forget that over five dozen more of my best men are patrolling the
streets as we speak? In less than ten minutes, they will all return
to this street, and justice will be served!” With that, he
suddenly began sprinting up the street, turned a corner onto North
Iron Street, and was gone.
“Yo,
think fast!” the archer called out, and Blue Jeans turned to see a
grubby dish rag thrown to him. As he caught it, the archer
explained, “You better clean that mess up off your sword, man.”
He then turned to where Smith Wesson had escaped and frowned, “Mmph!
Mm, mm . . . guy had to give us the whole 'evil villain,
you'll-pay-for-this' trip and everything! Punk-ass bitch . . . .”
Blue
Jeans smiled as he wiped off his sword, and finally got a better look
at the archer for the first time. He was of average height and
build, with lightning-quick brown eyes and tough black skin. He wore
a plain, sleeveless green vest and black slacks, and slung over his
shoulder was an unusual quiver, full of arrows, that seemed to look
more like an article of clothing than a quiver; it was flat, and
hugged his back, instead of circular and jutting outward. He had
short, wiry black hair and the small traces of adolescent stubble.
“Thanks,”
Blue Jeans said, out of necessity as much as gratitude, “And thank
you for your assistance.”
“Thank
me later, my man,” the archer spoke quickly, “You heard him. We
got less than ten minutes to get those people outta here before more
Pistols show up. And I don't know about you, but I ain't got enough
arrows for five dozen o' these cats.”
Blue
Jeans nodded, “Right you are,” and they both hurried up the other
end of the street, scanning the area for Aluminum Road's inhabitants.
Along
the way, the archer spoke up, “Man, you got some sweet moves! I
been lookin' out for you since that whuppin' you gave those Pistols
the other day. I ain't never seen nobody take on them boys like you!”
Blue
Jeans nodded again, “Well, I have to stay strong. Killing Pistols
doesn't change a lot, but my parents would've wanted me to help my
neighbors. So that's what I do.”
There
was a pause as they continued running, turning a corner at Antimony
Boulevard and spotting the assaulted citizens dotting the concrete a
few blocks away. Finally the archer answered, “I like the way you
think, brother. What do they call you?”
The
swordsman turned toward the archer as they ran and introduced
himself, “Blue Jeans.”
The
archer looked back at him questioningly, as if he'd given some other
color as the answer to the 'what color is the sky' question. The
look was fleeting, though, and they kept running as he replied, “Hey,
I don't judge, man. They call me Twang.”
They
had stopped by this time, just before approaching the crowd, and now
it was time for Blue Jeans to question the answer, “Twang?”
Twang
grinned and pulled three arrows from his quiver. Pulling them back
in his bowstring, he aimed them straight upwards and let go, and they
sailed into the air with a loud TWANG sound. Twang then turned
around, positioned himself two steps away from his firing spot, and
bent his head forward. After a few seconds, one arrow turned around
and sailed straight back down, and it fell directly back into Twang's
quiver. Twang took a quick step to the side and caught the second
one just as easily, in the same manner. He reached a hand out at the
same time. Between two fingers, he caught the third arrow, spun it
expertly in his hand, and slipped it back into the quiver from whence
it came.
Blue
Jeans' eyes widened. Clearly, this young archer was skilled, perhaps
as skilled with arrows as he himself was with a blade. “Most
impressive,” Blue Jeans congratulated.
Twang
kept up his showoff's grin as they approached the weary crowds, “You
damn right!”
*
* * * *
It
was late, and the night sky was dark and starless. The blood on the
carpet had dulled from a vivid red to a rusty brown. The Plasmoff
(an indispensable chemical clinically proven to permanently remove
bloodstains with no lasting residue) smelled strongly and punctured
the lungs and throat with an alcoholic pain.
And
General Smith Wesson had never been angrier in his entire life.
I'm
a man of my word,
he thought angrily as he scrubbed at his office carpet with his good
arm while massaging the pain in his face with the other (his casted
arm, where the swordsman had broken his elbow, was almost too stiff
to move at all). Indeed, before leaving, he had decreed that the
soldier with the lowest performance after the mission would clean the
dried blood from his office. As he had been the only survivor of
this horrific debacle (and after all, dead Pistols could hardly
follow orders, could they?), this made Wesson the odd man out, and
forced him down on his hands and knees with a brush and a bottle of
Plasmoff like some sort of DDZ grime-cleaner. It forced him to drag
the decaying, foul-smelling body of Lieutenant Hammer out of his
office. It forced him to scrape dried bits of gray matter off the
walls.
It
forced him to plan more carefully about causing unfathomable pain to
that impudent sword-swinger.
I'm
a man of my word,
he repeated to himself as he scrubbed. He and his men had searched
the entire DDZ from afternoon well into the night, and the more they
had searched for the two defiant warriors, the more likely it was
that they had vanished into thin air, the angrier Wesson had become.
From the moment he was forced to retreat, he'd made a promise to make
sure that swordsman and his foul-mouthed archer companion would burn.
They would burn, screaming and pleading for mercy, until there was
nothing left but the charred bones left in the wake of FIRENIGHT
dominance.
And
his slowly-building anger branded that promise into General Smith
Wesson's mind permanently.
I'm
. . . he
thought once again . . . . a
man . . . . . he
coughed as the Plasmoff settled into his lungs again . . . of
my word . . . .
--------------------------------------------------------*
* * * *--------------------------------------------------------
"Assassin!
After reporting failure to the Grand Commander of FIRENIGHT himself, Wesson employs a hitman to eliminate Blue Jeans and Twang. He's willing to hide in the shadows and wait as long as it takes to make the perfect kill—just like he waited to kill a certain pair of sword-users twenty years ago . . .
Meanwhile, Blue Jeans and Twang learn that they have more in common than they ever knew. Will their newfound bond distract them from the doom that awaits?
NEXT TIME! Blue Jeans Samurai #3:
Government
Treason! The Fate of BJ's Parents!
政府反逆！
BJの両親の運命！
Don't miss it!"
