The traveler’s inn proved to be a rather remarkable place to stay, clearly constructed to house Samurai, with the accommodations and furnishings to support such things well established. Koromi enjoyed a brief bath, and then retired to her room… Which she beckoned for Kesa to join her within.

  Initially, when Koromi shut the door behind the towering Oni, Kesa seemed remarkably nervous, her cheeks dark and her body language uncertain. To be invited alone into a bedroom with a Lady would be a scandalous act for any Samurai, let alone an Ashigaru. Were Koretsune to find out about the mere notion of such a thing, he’d have scolded her for days.

  Thankfully, Koromi quickly helped Kesa’s nerves:

  “I do not entirely trust Koretsune.” She explained, her apprehension being the source of the invitation was somehow a far easier pillow to swallow than the alternative, “So if you would not mind staying with me this night, it would grant me a greater level of comfort.”

  Kesa immediately snapped to a bow, though her muscled frame did not allow her to bend particularly far. “O-Of course, my Lady!” She stuttered, then rose to give a confident nod. “I am a lighter sleeper,” She chirped, as if trying to impress during an interview, “And thus should awaken to the slightest of intrusions.”

  Koromi smiled, “That reassures me. Please set an alarm for… five hours from now. Try to rest in that time.”

  And so the pair went to bed, Koromi in the room’s actual bed, and Kesa on a nearby couch. Koromi set her bag and swords down on the bed beside her, sleeping on its opposite side.

  Sleep came quickly and easily, for the excitement of the day and the hours awake in the numbing car had drained her of energy. It felt strange to be so tired, when she had ostensibly spent the whole night sitting down. Much of it was likely due to excitement and even overexcitement. She slept soundly, all the way through to her alarm…

  Though her alarm, which she had expected to be a digital clock, was instead Kesa’s hand on her shoulder.

  Koromi woke with a start, staring up at the massive Oni looming in the dark over her. Though no natural sunlight could pierce the room’s windows due to the interior city block the inn sat in, Koromi could tell morning had come thanks to a wall clock, its dim backlight one of the few sources of illumination in the room.

  Koromi began to speak, but Kesa held a finger to her lips, ushering her to be silent, and took a step back. The Oni had armed herself, sword drawn, and Koromi blinked groggily as adrenaline began to pulse in her veins.

  Quickly emerging from the comfort of the bed, dressed in her traveling clothes of the previous day, Koromi fixed her swords into her sash and slung her bag over one shoulder.

  “What is it?” She asked as quietly as she could, and again Kesa raised a hand to silence her, the huge woman’s attention on the door to the room.

  No more than a few moments later, Koromi spotted what had spooked her protector. Soft metallic tapping sounds came from the hall beyond the room, like little metallic pins rising and dropping on the hardwood flooring outside at a rapid rate. A shadow moved behind the paper door, then stopped. Smaller than a person, low to the ground, the size of a large house cat perhaps.

  Kesa took one slow step forward, the floor eerily creaking as she placed herself between the unknown intruder and Koromi. Koromi’s hand came to slowly rest on the hilt of her katana. She had not come close to drawing the real thing in years, and the familiar feeling of her palm wrapping about the grip was a minor comfort in the face of the unknown threat before them. The catch on the blade required a notable amount of force to draw it, as the blade itself had to be ‘activated’...

  Assuming time had not worn down its electronics and mechanisms to a state of disuse. She hoped the micro-fusion cells had not decayed to such an extent that it would not show its true potential, but even if it did, it would still be a sharp blade worthy of her hand.

  That curiosity was quickly struck from Koromi’s mind as a red light flicked on somewhere on the robot’s surface, bleeding through the paper door and painting a dot on Kesa’s chest.

  Koromi heard the Oni suck in a breath, and in a single motion one giant hand grabbed the Samurai’s shoulder, drawing her back deeper into the room and around a corner as a hail of gunfire exploded through the room in the place they’d occupied moments before.

  The ragged, consistent bark of an automatic weapon erupted again and again as streams of white-hot tracer rounds flickered through the air, splintering the wooden walls, blowing apart the bedframe and scattering down-stuffed pillow pieces across the room. The arc of bullets swept left in the direction they’d gone, blowing chunks of wood out of the wall and sending sharp splinters and bits of insulation in every direction.

  Kesa backed the two of them into a corner, well beyond the reach of its initial suppressive salvo as the shots blew out the room’s window, shattering glass and obliterating a painting beside it.

  It loosed what must’ve been sixty rounds before it abruptly stopped, the incessant roar of gunfire suddenly absent making Koromi’s ears ring, interrupted only by the clatter of shell casings across the wooden floor.

  The metallic tapping sounds quickly resumed, rapidly approaching. Kesa had kept Koromi pinned to the wall with one muscular arm for the gunfire’s duration, the samurai’s heart racing and pounding in her chest like an irregular, rabid drumbeat.

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  When Kesa released Koromi, the arm that had been bracing her brought its hand to her tachi, freeing the blade from its sheath in a fluid motion as she popped out from behind their cover, lashing the sword up at an angle. Koromi followed quickly, though before she had a chance to even consider drawing her own blade, Kesa had dispatched their foe.

  There on the floor, a small cuboid robot adorned with talisman seals and deep black paint sat on the floor, sliced neatly in two. A red laser sight above its ‘head’ sat adjacent to a machine gun, and a transparent half-empty drum magazine of bullets. The robot ordinarily suspended itself on twelve tiny needle-like legs, giving it an arachnid appearance. Kesa’s blade had severed five of the legs and cleft through the bot’s center.

  The high-frequency edge of Kesa’s tachi vibrated and hummed, liquid metal dripping from its surface and falling to the floor where the dissolved alloys popped and sizzled violently as they cooled.

  “An assassin?” Koromi asked breathlessly, her heart still racing. Kesa’s blade returned to its sheathe, the superheated edge cooling in its scabbard housing with a dull hiss.

  “There may be more.” Kesa cautioned, nudging the ‘bot with her foot. Though the emblem was difficult to make out in the dark and with the damage dealt to it, the clan mon of Oda was emblazoned upon the hunter-killer’s chassis.

  Koromi grit her teeth, and only then noticed that she could not hear the stomping of approaching boots, or shouting of guards. Nobody was coming to aid them, even after all that gunfire…

  “We must go.” She said, and Kesa nodded with agreement, making quickly for the room’s door. Even if Koretsune had something to do with this, he was too honorable a man to knowingly support an assassination attempt. This had to be someone else… Someone in Oda. But why?

  Stepping out into the silent hall, the pair quickly made for Akimo’s room, with Kesa in the lead. The door slid open to a grisly sight: There on the floor lay the other Ashigaru, his weapon still in its scabbard. He was half-dressed, cut down while preparing, a sickening gash had carved him open from his jaw to the left side of his stomach. Deep, still gushing his lifeblood across the tatami floor of his room.

  Koromi covered her mouth with the back of her hand, and Kesa quickly advanced to Akimo, kneeling to check his body for signs of life despite the horrid wound. His eyes were open though, staring eternally at the ceiling, jaw slack. Someone had cut him down with a blade, but dispatched a robot for her and Kesa. A sign of disrespect, perhaps.

  Kesa found no life in Akimo, gritting her teeth as she quietly took his handgun and its spare munitions, but left his sword on his body. He would need it on the long journey to yomi.

  The Oni stood, looking back at Koromi, who gestured for the hall. Again Kesa took the lead, and they passed the room that had been designated for her originally, its door open, though nobody was within.

  “They knew you were with me.” Koromi whispered, and Kesa nodded in agreement. Perhaps that was why they sent the robot, not believing a mortal assassin could claim both the Samurai and the Oni Ashigaru.

  Paying the empty room no further mind, that led them to the last room, Koretsune’s. Again the door was open, but nobody was inside.

  They were on the inn’s second floor, yet still no one had come upstairs. Had Koretsune heard gunfire, he would’ve rushed to her aid… Whoever had been through had killed Akimo, intended to kill Koromi and Kesa, but Koretsune was simply missing.

  With no further recourse to find him there and no safety found on the second floor, the pair quickly made for the stairs, skipping the first floor entirely as they quickly moved down. Kesa flinched when they reached the ground floor, and Koromi gasped sharply as she spotted the body of a servant sprawled out at the base of the stairs, throat cut. Body drenched in red from the split veins, eyes seized up and lifeless.

  “Monsters.” Koromi hissed, though she knew not if the perpetrator was one man or many.

  Pressing open the stairwell door, the pair made quick time down the halls of the traveler’s inn, until they reached the front lobby. There, a life-sized statue of a deer constructed with gold dominated the center of the wide, open room. The glossy hardwood floors shimmered, reflecting light from golden lights hanging from the ceiling, set into orange paper lanterns.

  Another servant’s corpse lay behind a front desk behind the statue, but this time an assailant was within view. A trio of Ashigaru stood in the lobby, gathered in a meeting circle, just in front of the desk. Koromi recognized them immediately: Oda Michisue’s men. They had the same uniforms, equipment, standardized to his retinue. He had followed them? Or been called by Koretsune…

  With the unstealthy way that Kesa and Koromi entered the lobby, rushed and nervous, they couldn’t remain hidden from the Ashigaru. Perhaps ten paces away from them and thirty paces from the front entrance, it was a dangerous place to be. Initially thinking to negotiate, to not simply assume the worst, Koromi almost began to raise her hands as she saw their heads turning toward them.

  Any doubt that Koromi was the intended target of this attack vanished when all three soldiers raised their weapons and unloaded automatic rifle fire at the pair.

  This time there was no cover to hide behind. No quick wall to duck back to for safety. Time seemed to slow down for Koromi, her eyes blurring as the muzzle flashes slowed to a stand-still.

  Bullets hung mid-air, glinting with golden light from above, stuck in the temporal soup. The darkened masks of those who would seek to kill her revealed no emotion. No eyes to peer into, no equal footing to be gained, no honor to eek out of the inglorious ambush. They would die with their swords still sheathed.

  She had always read that one’s life flashes before their eyes before death, but she saw no such revelation, even so sure she was in that moment that it was upon her. Her heart stilled as she held herself in that moment. All her hopes and dreams, memories and wants, desires for adventure and excitement had led her to that single solitary moment in time. A microsecond frozen in amber.

  “Let me save you.”

  The voice was a fathomless thing, whispering into her subconscious from a million years away. It had no shape or image, no clear gender or accent. It simply made its request.

  Yet it felt familiar. Like Koromi had heard it before, somewhere. Long ago. Years ago, at least. It felt warm. Experienced. It knew what it was doing – It could save her.

  The voice received its answer swiftly, for Koromi’s mind could harbor no reply otherwise:

  “Please.”

  A delay. It felt like hours. It wasn’t even a second.

  “It will be done.”