Omikami no Isan: Sacrifice

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Backdated to February 11, not long after this log. With Harada's and Xavier's help, the X-Men track down The Hand and attempt to save the bearers of the imperial regalia. Two out of three ain't bad.


It was fortunate for the X-Men that one of the bearers of the regalia also happened to be a mutant; it was just a simple matter of tracking down Hiro Takachiho to locate The Hand's base back near Iga. "They are a walking cliché," Shiro muttered angrily. "A cave near the birthplace of ninjutsu. We should put them out of their misery so they do stop embarrassing themselves."

"Cliché or not, these guys did firebomb a halfway house in Chicago a couple of years ago, and Dad says they've got some serious pull in the Pacific Rim underworld. So they've got to be more competent than, say, your average Yakuza thug, and we're walking into a place that might as well have trap chiseled over the entrance." Kane said softly beside Shiro, moving carefully down into the darkness. He'd been paired on the flank with the angry young man, and the last thing he wanted was to underestimate the potential danger. "So don't go in too confident, eh?"

Jennie was silent next to them, watching the lines of probability shift around them. "It's not great," Jennie said softly so the others could hear. "But it doesn't entirely suck. We might be able to pull this one off."

"We can't go in too hard," Scott said, just as quietly. "Not when we need to get those three out of there." He looked sideways at Kyle, then Garrison, assessing. "You two in first, I think."

Given the sheer number of ninja stars, sharp pointy things, and explosives that he'd seen, heard, smelled or been told about in the last few hours, Kyle had actually put on his entire uniform minus the boots, instead of his normal approach of removing bits of the body armor and refusing to close his jacket. "I've got at -least- four that I can hear talking. Either they don't know we're here..." Kyle said quietly, following just behind Garrison. "Or they don't give a shit."

"Speed is our friend tonight." Kane nodded, pausing at the point where the cave began to widen out. They were on the cusp of a much larger area, and Kane could see the orange flickers of flame reflected on the rocks past the roughhewn antechamber they were creeping towards. He pointed to the guard on the right for Kyle, taking the two on the left for himself. This was one of the times that Kane missed his neural stunners.

At a three on the finger count, both men came around the corner at top speed, considerably faster than any normal person could react to. The first one Kane reached had just started to turn his head, when he was slammed viciously against the rock wall, knocking him senseless. The other opened his mouth to speak, but one of the Canadian's hands clamped around his throat, and another punch dispatched him almost soundlessly.

Preventing the ninjas from shouting any kind of warning was as obviously on Kyle's mind as much as it was on Garrison's, and he was behind the remaining guard, with an a arm tightly around his throat before the ninja had time to do more than pull out a short sickle-like weapon. Kyle caught the ninja's forearm in mid-swing and dug his claws through the black cloth and into his opponent's flesh while smashing the arm against the rock wall until the weapon fell to the ground.

With the last of the guards down, Scott and the others joined them. "Roulette," he said, "I want as much chaos as possible when we hit them." They had trained for that in the Danger Room; the Hand, presumably, hadn't. "Blink, get to the hostages as quickly as you can and get them out. Everyone else, get rid of the opposition."

With a smile, the girl squinted and flexed her fingers. For the Hand, suddenly things went all to hell.

Teleporting while Roulette did her thing was hell, but fortunately, not only had Blink trained for it, she had a very narrow window of un-chaotic chaoticness. Without giving the captives a chance to reaction, Clarice was in and out, literally in the blink of an eye, Hiro and Megumi with her back at the Blackbird. The third...well...she'd gotten two of the three?

Katsuhiro Nanahara was not so lucky. Half a dozen priests clad in dark blue robes surrounded the yokozuna, who sat on his knees and clutched at his chest as if he were having a heart attack. As the priests' chanting reached a crescendo, Nanahara cried out. His eyes turned white and his skin slackened, and something seemed to pound within his chest. He tried to speak, to beg the priests to stop, but the only voice he could find screamed unintelligibly to the gods. Suddenly, what looked like a golden rod burst forth from his heart and he looked down at it in horror. One of the priests slowly approached him and gripped the rod. Nanahara's cries grew louder.

"Sayonara," they could hear the priest say, and he pulled Kusanagi-no-tsurugi from the dead sumo wrestler like Arthur pulled the sword from the stone. It filled the room with brilliant white light like the sun brought down to Earth.

In other times, Shiro would look upon the symbol of divine legacy in awe. But now he felt an anger stir within that he had never felt before. This was defilement, pollution, sin of the highest level. Get rid of the opposition, Cyclops said? Shiro didn't need that order. He ignited in a burst of nuclear flame and charged the offending priest, slamming him against the opposite wall and a sickening crunch echoed throughout the hall. The priest fell limp at Shiro's feet, broken but still breathing, and he caught the sword before it fell to the ground.

"That's what too confident meant!" Kane said as Shiro charged past him and into the midst of the ceremony. There were a lot of ninjas boiling out of the hidden depths of the cave, and the odds kept climbing against them. Kane burst into the area, making a beeline for Shiro's flank, seeing if he could buy them some breathing room. A ninja appeared in front of him, sword descending, but Kane's chip had triggered his reflexive response even before Kane's own inhumanly fast speed did. He ducked under the arc of the blade, grabbed the man by the front of his outfit, and bowling him underarmed into a group of combatants.

Flash and pepperbombs rained down in front of him, but this time Garrison was ready, shutting his eyes tightly and holding his breath as he stampeded through, blindly trampling the first line of guards under his rush. The air was smoky but clear, as he shot at glance at the hole he'd created in their defense. Between that and Jennie's powers, the Hand was terribly vulnerable to the other X-Men if they tried to swamp Shiro.

The acrid smell of the pepperbombs in the air made Kyle's sinuses burn, and only served to piss him off more than he already was. He couldn't make like a rampaging bull like Garrison could, so he stayed back, tackling the few ninja who had managed to avoid the trample, and doing his best to keep them away from Cyclops and Roulette, giving them the best chance to focus larger targets, like the swarm of ninjas rushing forward.

He risked hitting his teammates if he just aimed for the swarm, Scott acknowledged coldly, and was firing off short, quick bursts of energy even as the thought finished forming in his head. Headshots, each of them, if carefully measured not to do lethal damage - there'd be a lot of concussed ninja after this, but given that he'd just seen one of the people they'd tried to protect murdered, he wasn't in the mood to care.

Beside him Jennie gritted her teeth in concentration. With her powers, laces snapped or became tangled, ankles twisted, heads knocked together. It was almost like Keystone cops. But with Ninjas.

"Get the hostages!" Jennie yelled.

Garrison dared a moments look over to where Shiro was circling a well dressed man, but seemed to be relatively safe for now. The same could not be for the scattered members of the Hand, who were obviously used to a more mundane variety of opponents, and now found themselves hard pressed by the X-Men.

~*~

Kusanagi-no-tsurugi the grass-cutter sword, also known as Amanomurakumo-no-tsurugi the sword of the gathering clouds of heaven, shined like a beacon to the gods in Shiro's hands. Its radiance was blinding and it hummed a divine tune in his ears. It was enough to make a man weep. "~You have done a very foolish thing, Tsurayaba~," Shiro declared to the leader of The Hand, stepping forward with his right foot and holding the sword above his knee in the heaven and earth stance.

"Oh, do shut up, you nauseating adolescent." Matsu'o said, circling Shiro and keeping a wary eye on the sword. "You think that those relics mean anything beyond their power? Tools of enslavement, meant to keep bound those who a few foolish gods and men deemed unworthy, and keep everyone subservient. You think you've achieved some great honour holding it, Yoshida? The blood of criminals flows in your veins, the dishonour of your family is no secret to we who know, and even now, you mouth the words of reverence for your culture, and spend your time an ocean away, working for those who brought nuclear fire to the land of the Gods."

Matsu'o spat at Shiro's feet, already modifying his plans. "Your worth is nothing but a delusion. You're no better than one of my paid mercenaries."

Shiro's grip tightened. "I do not think that you are one to speak of honor. You betrayed a sacred vow and murdered my cousin. And for what purpose? In service to your pathetic demon who is stuffed away, forgotten in the underworld?" A grin appeared on his lips, although some might see it as more of a bearing of teeth in challenge. "You murdered innocent people, your countrymen, in search of power. You are the one who is worthless."

"Of course, but we always have been. My honour is in killing, in murder, and in power." Matsu'o was goading the younger man. Any other time, he'd have happily stepped in and killed Shiro. He'd been steeped in murder since his first breath, and knew it in ways no young man could conceive of. But the power of the sword made him pause. "You serve the people who stripped the will out of these islands, and leashed them to their heels. Nothing more than a useful mongrel."

"I serve no one." It was obvious that Matsu'o was just provoking Shiro, but at the moment he couldn't care. He had Kusanagi, and Matsu'o had nothing. He lowered the sword into waki stance and charged, fire trailing behind him like a rocket.

Matsu'o smiled grimly, twisting away from the blow, and slashing out with a slim throwing blade, scoring a shallow hit on Shiro's leg. Beneath his smile though, Matsu'o had already come to his decision. Even if the young man hadn't noticed, the enchantment of the blade had made him faster, stronger, and not even a master assassin like himself could be sure he could kill the young man. Worse, he had no idea what the full capabilities of the blade were, and it was entirely possible that more powerful magics would come into play.

Calmly, he wrapped the blade in his handkerchief, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his ceremonial robes. "Think on what I've said, America's Dog. Those you protect have destroyed your people in ways those relics of a bygone age could never protect against. One day, you'll regret not letting me destroy them." He palmed a smoke bomb, and tossed it at Shiro's feet, filling his vision with darkness.

The smoke clouded his eyes so Shiro couldn't even make out anything in infrared. Coughing violently as the smoke filled his lungs, too, he recalled another legend of the sword, of how a prince extinguished the blazing fields that threatened to consume him by calling down wind. That the treasures were real was enough of a reason to try, so Shiro swung the sword and amazingly enough, the smoke cleared. Matsu'o was gone, which didn't surprise Shiro at all, but the rest of the cult remained. "It has been a long time since you have tasted battle, ne?" he said to the blade which pulsed its brilliant white light as if in response. "Then bring down the fury of Susanoo to those who have defiled you."

~*~

Kane parried a kama strike at his head, literally folding the man's arm back twice over in response, shattering the bones. One teleported in on his flank, disappearing again just ahead of his swipe, and re-appeared over his head with a war cry as he slashed out with the tiger claw hand weapons. It was a good feint, and just scored a shallow cut on Kane's cheek as he spun away from the blades, and then stepped back in too fast to be reacted to, and crushed both collarbones and shoulders with one devastating forearm strike. The normal range of ninjutsu, with their dangerous grappling attacks, nerve strikes, and high speed defense just didn't work against a person who could casually rip your arms off in return, and the cabal of assassins was painfully learning that fact.

Clarice teleported back to the fray once she was certain the hostages were safe and going to stay put. She grabbed the first ninja and disappeared before coming back and doing it again. Hopefully, they liked hiking down Mt. Fuji. It was hard to defend against teleportation attacks like that, when any touch to her could make a person disappear with her. It wasn't really fair. That was why she liked it.

After one nasty attack from a ninja wielding a set of clawed gloves that left him bleeding heavily, Kyle had switched his approach from 'disable' to something close to 'disable and maim', returning kicks with rib-breaking knee strikes, twisting wrists and ankles far past the point of breaking, and viciously pulping knees and elbows whereever he could. The ninjas' masks prevented him from gouging out eyes, but only just, and more than one of his opponents were left with deep claw wounds on what little skin showed.

A ninja flew by Kyle just inches away from his face as if he were a discarded toy. Another two followed suit. Shiro stood in hasso stance, legs straight and glowing sword held upright. "~Tsurayaba has fled, so now you must provide me with the fun~," he said, neatly deflecting a kodachi-armed ninja's attack. He moved in to take the offensive, but another jumped in to back up his comrade. Steel rang against steel as Shiro drove back his new opponent. Spotting an opening, he raised the sword to disarm the ninja, but smoke filled his vision. He cursed and swung Kusanagi blindly to conjure up another gust of wind, but unsurprisingly nobody was facing him anymore. In fact, the room was now empty save for the X-Men and the lifeless body of Nanhara Katsuhiro.

The sword’s light dimmed, casting the yokozuna in shadow. “Did we win?”