Battle Royale
Chapter seventeen
Kenji
The bolt hit the grass below us with a ping that I heard over the engines.
A second bolt sheared free. The staircase dropped two inches on the left side and every man on it grabbed for the railing.
I holstered one gun and seized the rail. "Up! Now! Everyone!"
Reo drew his blades and threw himself up the stairs ahead of us. The Tsuchigumo mask cut through the cluster of soldiers at the top like a black knife through paper. His first strike opened a man’s neck from ear to ear.
Blood sprayed.
His second took an arm. His third drove a blade through a vest and the chest behind it.
The twins flanked Reo. One went left and the other went right, but their matching kitsune masks made them a single creature with four arms and two blades. They killed in tandem.
One opened Akiro’s guard. The other drove the strike home. Their masks gleamed black with golden teeth bared in identical grins.
Hiro and I pushed up behind them. My silver guns barked in both hands, shooting any target not too close to Reo and the twins. Each shot found center mass. Each man fell backward into the men behind him.
Then flames came.
Men kept pouring.
The engine kept rolling.
I roared, “We will not let them leave this fucking island tonight!”
Hiro fought beside me with his blade in one hand and his pistol in the other. He shot a man in the throat and slashed another across the chest in the same motion, and the Hannya mask never turned. His eyes stayed forward. His body moved like a deadly machine.
More men came from behind us on the ground. They hit our rear. My guards behind me turned to face them.
And then the Claws appeared through the smoke—Toma, Daisuke, Kaede—and crashed into the soldiers at the base of the stairs. The Fangs were there too—Kaoru, Satoshi, Yoichi, and Rin. Blood covered all of their masks.
The staircase became a vertical kill corridor.
Enemies above.
Us between.
Enemies below.
The metal steps slicked with blood and fuel. Shell casings bounced down the stairs in a brass cascade.
Men fell off the railing in both directions.
Then the plane shuddered.
Goddamn it!
The wheels lifted a foot from the grass, taking the staircase with it.
Shit!
The staircase lurched beneath my boots. The angle shifted—two degrees, three, five—and the railing vibrated so hard the bolts screamed.
OH FUCK!
The plane rolled forward and then desperately lifted three feet off the ground.
“Hurry!” Every step I took moved the metal under me.
The entire ramp swung sideways with the plane's slow rotation and the bodies of the men Reo and the twins had killed slid down the steps and fell off the edge into open air.
The plane was now five feet in the air, and so were we.
The staircase groaned at the connection point. The bolts that held it to the fuselage shrieked under the strain. The wind caught the ramp like a sail and threw it sideways, and I grabbed the railing with one hand and held my gun with the other and fired up at the men still pouring from the hatch.
“Akiro, you cowardly son of a bitch!” I shot some more. “Come out and finish this!”
The plane rose to six feet.
Hiro's boots slipped on a blood-slicked step. He dropped to one knee, caught the railing, and pulled himself up. The Hannya horns scraped the underside of the step above him.
I shivered. “Don’t you fucking fall!”
“Never.” Hiro tore his mask off and sneered.
The twins pressed against the railing on the left side. Aki—or Yuki—grabbed his brother's arm to keep him from sliding off the edge.
The plane rose, and so did we.
And soon the fucking grass below was ten feet away and getting farther.
Reo fought two men at the top of the stairs.
The plane's movement threw his balance and he adjusted, widening his stance, driving his blade upward into a man's armpit.
The Tsuchigumo mask showed nothing. His body showed everything—the ribs that Nyomi's cheese had supposedly healed were taking the punishment and his weight favored his right side.
We have to change course.
I looked down.
The Claws and Fangs had nearly cleared the soldiers at the base of the staircase. Only a handful remained between them and open ground.
Good.
Because the plane wasn't climbing slowly anymore.
Every heartbeat stole another foot.
"Jump off the stairs!" I yelled. "We’ve got this from here!"
None of them jumped.
Kaede buried his blade in a man's throat.
Daisuke drove his shoulder into another and threw him beneath the landing gear.
Rin took a step up.
“Don’t be suicidal, Kenji,” Yoichi growled as Satoshi got next to him.
Toma didn't even look up. "We stay together. Always."
"No!" I slammed another round into the hatch above us, getting a man who had just stepped out. "You won't make it and this staircase won’t hold all of us."
The plane lurched higher. The grass no longer looked close enough to trust. I knew the moment was coming when jumping stopped being an escape and became a gamble with broken backs and snapped necks.
"That's an order!" I roared. "Jump while you still can!"
Hiro yelled, “NOW!”
“You fucking assholes.” Kaoru looked down at the shrinking ground. “Jump with us!”
“No.” I reloaded. “This ends here for us. For you, jump off and finish anyone down there.”
Cursing, one by one, they grabbed the railing, shoved away from the staircase, and threw themselves into open air.
Kaoru spiraled through the air and hit it hard.
Toma and Daisuke fell and rolled.
Satoshi dropped and then crashed shoulder first.
Kaede disappeared into the smoke before hitting the ground and staggering back to his feet.
They made it.
Barely.
But Yoichi and Rin, they stayed.
I sneered. “Get off of the fucking stairs!”
Yoichi snatched off his mask. “Call your spirit beast back. He’s rested long enough.”
I blinked.
What? He can see and hear him?
I had no time to break this new information down. Goryū, come back.
The engines roared louder.
The propellers bit the air.
The plane accelerated forward, and the staircase rattled like a chain being dragged across concrete.
We were now too high in the air to jump. We either would fall to our deaths or get inside that plane where many armed men remained with Akiro and my father.
Goryū exploded from the dark below the plane.
Black smoke poured upward along the fuselage and his massive body reformed in the air above the hatch. His wings spread wide. His gold-fire eyes blazed brighter than before, as if the rest had fed him rage instead of calm.
He opened his jaw and shadow-fire flooded the hatch opening from above.
The men inside the doorway screamed. Three of them stumbled backward into each other. A fourth threw himself sideways and missed the ramp entirely—his body tumbled into open air, arms spinning, and the dark swallowed him before his scream finished.
Two more staggered out of the hatch clutching their faces. Their legs buckled on the top step. The wind caught them and peeled them off the staircase like leaves torn from a branch.
They fell without sound.
Hiro and I were able to rush up.
Goryū poured more fire into the opening, and I got a good view inside. The men still in the plane scrambled deeper into the cabin bay, away from the hatch, away from the shadow flames, tripping over each other and their own weapons.
The doorway cleared.
That is all I have for now.
Rest again. Come back when you can.
Goryū's body thinned. The gold eyes dimmed. He dissolved into the wind along the plane and was gone.
But the hatch was open and empty.
The tree line approached. If the plane gained enough speed it would rise over them. If it rose, the staircase would fold or break away and anyone still on it would fall.
We were running out of ground.
A few remaining men rushed out, and I knew Akiro was probably running out of men at this point.
"Move!" Rin's voice cut through the noise like a blade through silk.
I grabbed the railing with both hands and pressed my body flat against the left side.
Hiro threw himself against the right railing.
Up in front, the twins dropped to the steps and hugged the metal, and Reo stayed out of the way.
Rin raced up the center. He moved through the gap between us so fast his white clothing blurred. His two hooked-braids whipped behind him.
As soon as he got close to the top, one man grabbed his arm and screamed in pain, falling back into the plane.
Rin's right braid caught the second soldier across the jaw. The hooked blade tore through skin and the poison followed. The man’s hands flew to his face, he screamed, and his skin began to bubble before he hit the step.
Rin's left braid whipped sideways and took a third man across the throat. The man dropped his weapon, and grabbed his own neck and the blistering started immediately—swollen welts rising across his skin, green pus breaking through the surface.
Rin moved higher.
Each step was a kill.
Each braid whipped left or right and every man it touched fell gasping, clawing at their own flesh, tumbling down the shaking staircase and off the edge into empty air.
Thank you, Rin.
A man lunged at Rin with a knife. Rin sidestepped on the shaking metal, grabbed the man's wrist with his bare hand, and held it. The man's skin began to blacken at the contact point. Rin pushed him off the railing and the body spun into the dark below.
And thank you, Deja.
The entire staircase cleared in seconds. Bodies fell in the air like fruit from a shaken tree—blistered, screaming, grabbing at wounds that swelled and split. Rin stood near the top of the ramp with both braids swinging at his back.
Reo was two steps below him, reloading his guns and doing his best to hold on.
The plane trudged forward as the staircase cranked and vibrated.
The forest canopy spread beneath us like a dark ocean. We were too high. The trees looked small. The ground had become a death sentence.
Yoichi stood three steps below Reo. He had kept his gold kitsune mask on, and his body was angled toward the hatch with a calm that made the wind and the shaking metal and the screaming engines feel like background noise in someone else's war.
The seven of us were all that remained on the stairs—Rin, Reo, Yoichi, the twins, Hiro, and me.
No one else was jumping tonight.
"Go!" I screamed over the wind.
We ran up the remaining steps. The ramp shook so violently that each step was a gamble. The metal shrieked at the bolts. Wind tore at our masks and our clothes and tried to rip us off the stairs.
Rin reached the hatch first. He was two steps ahead of the twins and Reo, three ahead of Hiro, four ahead of me. The white of his clothing blazed against the dark interior of the plane. His braids swung behind him as he planted one foot on the hatch’s threshold.
The shot came from inside.
A bullet punched through Rin's chest and left his back.
And then more bullets slammed into Rin.
“No!” I ran up.
One.
Two.
Three dark bloodied-flowers opened across the white fabric of his back.
His feet left the threshold. His arms opened wide. His head tilted toward the sky as his spine curved away from the hatch.
His braids trailed behind him like two dark ribbons. The red flush on his cheeks caught the landing lights.
And then gravity took Rin.
He fell backward off the staircase, and the air snatched his white body into the dark below.
The twins fired back into the plane, hopefully taking out whoever killed Rin, but the damage was already done.
"No!" The scream tore from my throat.
Hiro shook his head. “Not Rin! That didn’t happen! Right?!”
“Just keep going!” Yoichi moved in a blur, tore his kitsune mask, and threw it to the metal stairs where it clanged once and spun. He ripped his shirt over his head and his bare chest hit the wind. “I’ve got him!”
“What do you mean?!” Reo headed down. “Yoichi, calm down! What are you doing? We need you!”
I was still too shattered to think.
“Stay there, Roar! Protect the Dragon!” Yoichi’s eyes went wild in a way I had never seen from him—the poet, the gambler, the man who recited haikus while reloading sniper rifles.
That man was gone.
What stood on the staircase was older than him.
Older than this island.
Older than the masks we wore.
Goryū hit my mind. The kitsune may save him.
My head was still rattled from Rin’s loss.
What kitsune?
To everyone’s horror, Yoichi climbed over the railing.
Reo held the ribs on his right and took another step down. “Yoichi, what the fuck are you doing?!”
Hiro headed down. “Yoichi!”
“Focus!!” Yoichi planted one foot on the railing and launched himself off the staircase into the open sky.
GODDAMN IT!!!!!
The wind took Yoichi!
And then—a flash of gold shot up.
Bright.
Blinding.
I screamed. "Yoichi!"
“No!” Hiro trembled. “No more ghosts. N-no more.”
The gold vanished into the canopy. The trees swallowed it the way they had swallowed Rin's white body seconds before. The dark closed behind both of them as if neither had ever existed.
Gone.
Both of them.
Hiro grabbed my arm. "Kenji!"
I stared at the sky below us where two of my men had just disappeared. My chest cracked open. Rin's three red flowers on his back. Yoichi's gold flash. The staircase shaking under my boots. The wind pulling at my face.
Reo's voice cut through. "Move, Kenji! Now!"
Hiro turned me around. “Brother, let’s finish this!”
I swallowed. “Y-yes.”
“They didn’t die for nothing!” Hiro’s hands shook on my arms. “They didn’t!”
“They didn’t!” I shook my head.
“Listen!” Hiro blinked. “There’s no time to. . .mourn.”
Reo added, “We’ll do it later!”
“Let’s go.” I got out of Hiro’s hold and headed up.
The twins dove through the hatch firing. Bullets sparked off the metal frame. Reo threw himself through behind them and his gun flashed once inside the plane and men screamed.
Once Hiro and I got up fast, I saw that it was dark inside. Still, I grabbed the hatch frame with one hand, aimed my silver gun into the interior with the other, and fired four shots into the muzzle flashes.
A man dropped.
Another stumbled.
I threw myself through the hatch, hit the metal floor, and rolled to the wall. Hiro came in behind me, blades drawn, and buried one in the nearest man's throat before his feet had settled.
Where are you, father? You fucking coward! Because of you so many good people have died!!
Wind howled through the open door behind us. The staircase tore free from the plane with a sound like a building collapsing—metal screaming, bolts shearing, the entire ramp peeling away into the night and crashing through the canopy below.
A tree branch sheared across the open hatch and splinters exploded inward.
The plane climbed harder.
The floor tilted.
The trees below grew smaller.
We were inside.
The hatch gaped open behind us.
Wind and moonlight poured through.
The plane shook as it clawed above the tree line.
Five of us remained—Reo, the twins, Hiro, and me. With my guns aimed forward, I squinted to get a better view of the dim cabin in front of us.
Ahead, deeper in the cabin bay, Akiro and his remaining men waited in the dim red emergency lighting and surrounded him.
And right behind them, the Fox crouched in the shadow with two guns in his shaking hands.
There you go.