Chapter 3:

“Such is the path you have chosen.” Koko withdraws her blade from Kirei’s arm back into a defensive stance. Kirei grasps the hilt of her own katana in both hands waiting for the next attack. A heavy coat of silence fell over the scene; the only barely audible sound was the wind blowing outside. Koko breaks the silence. “You can’t destroy it. Why do you think it was sealed in the first place?” The two continue circling each other. “That sword… I had voices in my head for those three years, voices telling me to kill, the sword’s a demon, and demons can not be destroyed!”
She lunges at Kirei, who quickly parried the blow and stabbed at her opponent, who gracefully dodged the fatal blow. Kirei falls into an unorthodox fighting stance, her blade held low and to her right side, as if sheathed; her right hand on the hilt effectively holding the sword backwards. “You just haven’t tried hard enough!” She backhands Koko with her metallic left hand bringing her off guard long enough to bring her right hand to bear; the blade of her katana following the hook’s arc.

Crimson droplets of blood fell to the dirt floor of the dwelling, staining that area a dark red. Koko held her hand to her shoulder, dropping her weapon from shock. Kirei took that opportunity to move the final piece into position, pointing her blade at the young woman kneeling on the ground. “Will you tell me now, or do I have to inflict a more serious wound to incite your speech?”
Koko bows her head in defeat as she withdraws her hood, her long ivory hair looking a complete mess. She looks over to the woman standing in the corner with her arms crossed, and her eyes widen in shock. “That woman…Her aura is just like his…If I’m right about her…That presence…No…” She brings herself to her feet, using her sword as a balancing post. “Very well, but I am only the gate keeper and can only show you the way; I cannot guide you by my word to those who sealed it.”
Kirei sheaths her sword. She looks at the hooded woman’s face, noticing a slight hint of fear.
“There’s a reason you’re doing this, more than from fear of me killing you. Tell me.”
Nima looks at her guest. She grabs the scabbard for her blade and sheathes it. Her fear becomes more apparent. “You’re right. I don’t fear you killing me.” She looks over at the other woman standing in her home. “There are others who will seek me out; they will know I have been weakened.” She limps to the door. There’s a small metallic box sitting next to it. She removes the lid, revealing some kind of electronic device. “It would be best if I were thought to be dead.”
Miyori looks at the device, trying to figure out what it is. Then it hits her. The crude shape, the shoddily connected exposed wiring, a digital number display; everything about the thing screamed IED.
“...Um, what’re you doing with something like this?!”
Nima keeps calibrating the device. “I don’t know anyone, so this was supposed to act as my second should I have failed to keep the secret.” She finishes setting the device and the display lights up for five minutes. “Every moment we waste here, ‘he’ draws ever closer. We have to… Oy…” She collapses, trying to support herself on the box the bomb was in. Her makeshift bandage had turned a crimson red, blood running down her arm. “I’m…probably about… to…shock… Need… leave here…”
The clock on the explosive was counting down, and the younger swordswoman was just about unconscious. Kirei looks at her friend. “We don’t have time for this, pick her and and haul her out of here.”
Miyori gives her a quixotic look. Kirei just glares back. “Hey, I’m not the one who’s been hauling around giant anvils for the past seven years; put that strength to use so we can get out of here!”
Miyori did as she was told, and unceremoniously slung the unconscious sowrdswoman over her shoulder and followed her friend out of the small lodging. If anyone was paying any attention if the main part of the village, they would’ve heard what sounded like a dull roar of thunder, and if they looked over past the small forest in the northwest, they would’ve seen a pillar of black smoke.
The girls managed to hit the dirt before the explosive went off. Kirei picks herself off the ground and looks back to survey the damage. Nima’s bomb was certainly thorough; the destruction was complete, everything within a 5 meter radius of the epicenter of the fireball was charred beyond recognition. She looks over at the other two. Miyori had attempted to shield Nima with her body; she was covered in random debris.
She looks up and sees her friend, but notices something wrong with her. Kirei’s left arm was bent at an unnatural angle, even for a cybernetic replacement. “Ki-ki, your arm.”
Kirei just looks at it. It was a mangled mess of metal and wires at the break points; at the elbow joint and halfway up the forearm. Blood was pouring from were internal parts were exposed. It was then that the pain hit her; she felt like her left arm was being dipped in a bucket of molten rock. She looks at her friend. “You just had to make it realistic, didn’t you?” The swordswoman falls unconscious, not able to take the pain anymore.


* * *


Kirei wakes up in an unfamiliar room, with no memory of how she got there, or why she was there in the first place. She looks around to try and take in her surroundings, noting that the walls were made metal, much like the buildings of the Western Continent. She sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bed, noticing something was off. She slides off the bed and onto her feet, only to lose her balance and face plant. That’s when she realized; her left leg was missing from about mid-thigh down. “So, she really wasn’t joking when she said she’d have to amputate…” She looks at her stump of a left arm, and waves it around. “Well, I’m missing half of my body; it’s gonna be a bitch hopping around on a crutch like this…”
“Not quite.”
Kirei looks over to the source of the voice, and sees the girl who picked her up from the field, holding a lump of metal in the shape of a leg. “Worked on it all week, same with my grammar. Man, Japanese word order is weird to understand.”
Kirei manages to climb back up onto the bed. “So, I’ve been out for a week?”
Miyori puts the leg down on the side table next to the bed. “Two and a half. You almost scared me the other day, I thought you were dead.” She hands Kirei the leg for her to inspect it. “So, what do you think? I can do the same for your arm. That is, if you want me to.”
The swordswoman puts the artificial limb back on the side table. She was thinking about any alternatives, but the only other practical solution was an automatic wheelchair, and Daimura didn’t have many of those, it’d be hard to go anywhere with the terrain shaped the way it was. She looks at her left side, most of her arm was missing and so was half her leg; she knew this already, but she had to let it sink in. “Go ahead… do what you can.”

Miyori looks at her, and notices her emotion; Kirei looked as if she felt the world was going to end. “Alright, let me get started.” She goes out to the other room, and returns with a bunch of tools and various instruments. Kirei looks kind of worried, but her worried expression is replaced with a mask of uncaring. “Will it hurt?”
Miyori puts on a pair of goggles. “I’m going to reconnect blood vessels and nerve endings. Your body will act like your leg was never missing” She picks up a saw. “But yes, this will not be pleasant.”
Kirei’s façade wavers for only a second, but she quickly regains her composure. She looks over at the girl and tries to mentally brace herself for the pain. “Go ahead…”


                                                              * * *


Kirei wakes up looking at a ceiling. “Wait a minute, a ceiling? Wasn’t I outside?” She sits up and tries to survey her surroundings. She was in the same room she was in seven years ago when Miyori had first cyberised her. Well, it obviously couldn’t have been the same room; they were in Raitou just outside of Tanaka when that had happened.
But, here she was, the room looked exactly the same, save for the obvious structural design changes. Miyori walks in the room wearing bloodstained blue coveralls. “You’re awake? Wow, I’m surprised you didn’t start screaming bloody murder when I detached your arm to fix it.”
Kirei sits up and looks at her left arm. Miyori had taken the arm off from the attachment ring. It served to cut off blood flow to the arm if the need had arisen to perform extensive maintenance. At least, that’s what Miyori had tried to explain to her about operating her new arm. She was just glad that she wasn’t in any real pain anymore.
She steps out of bed and looks around before finding a change of clothes on the side table. “What happened after I blacked out?”
Miyori was shuffling about the room looking for various parts and tools. “I had to carry you both back here. Right now she’s sleeping, but she did say that as soon as I got you fixed up that we need to leave.”
Kirei watches her friend closely. Miyori seems more than slightly irritated; she drops something and mutters something under her breath. “It’s Nima isn’t it?”
“I don’t trust her, Ki.” She pulls a chair over to the bed. “She attacks you, without even giving you a chance to explain yourself, then she pulls a complete 180 and offers to help us. All that before she decided to blow up her house.”
Kirei shifts a bit, before laying back down, her back to her friend. “I know that this may sound stupid, but she can help me destroy that sword, she can tell me where to go next.” She sighs. “And you don’t have to come with us if you don’t want to. I know you’ve started a new life here, and I don’t want to ruin that for you.”
The swordsmith sighs. If she knew her friend even half as much as she thought she did, there was no changing her mind, especially when it came to revenge (She still had the scar from the last time she pulled a prank on her). She brushes her hair out of her eyes, pulling her fringes back into a makeshift ponytail. “I never said I had a good life here. I mean, this place sucks, like seriously. My business has been going downhill since no one here collects swords anymore.” She throws the rag she was holding onto the table next to Kirei’s bed. “I’ve been doing odd jobs around the village to pay for meals and to keep everything here running. I don’t mind the cold, I mean, it’s warmer here than where I’m from originally, but still... Y’know?”
Miyori gets stands up and faces the other room. “I still have to talk to Ms. Psycho Bitch in the other room; she said she knew something about that broken sword I have. I’ll be back in a bit.” She leaves the room, leaving Kirei sitting in her bed.
The only thing the swordswoman can think to do is… well, just that: think.  Was Miyori really planning on leaving what she had here just to help her? Nima had said the said had an evil influence, what if Miyori fell under its power? And was she telling the truth when she said she hated her life in Kashi? And going back to earlier, who was this ‘he’ the Nima was so afraid of?
Kirei sighs. There was nothing she could do about it now; she’d just have to wait to talk to them both when she was better.

All that was left of the little shack was a bunch of shattered and burnt wood amidst a black spot in the ground, most of which was covered by a freshly falling blanket of snow. “So, she failed to protect their little secret.” A man with short, unruly hair, wearing a black trench coat and dark glasses was surveying the scene before him. He reaches inside his coat tail to the hilt of one of his swords. It would be unremarkable, save for the silvery wrappings used for the grip. It was glowing faintly. The man looks down at his sheathed sword. “You believe she is still around here don’t you, Gintsuki?”
He turns toward the makeshift path to the main village. “Well, shall we go find our key master then?” He grins, and his sword seems to glow even more. “I’ll take that as a yes…”