ʙʟᴏᴏᴅʟᴜsᴛ

Philippines, Carmen, Bohol Province: Chocolate Hills

2033

Nama took a break between passing off the next kilo of .9999 pure gold bars.

“Pssst”, Sato’s hiss toward his lifelong friend.

Nama looked back pretending to be lighting a cigarette with an imaginary zippo.

Between them was a new tech plant PLA captive. A captive traitor stripped of his humanity, implanted with surveillance cameras in his eyes.

“Uragirimono. Don’t look at me!”

The glowing blue eyes looked away to censor Nama from the recording being monitored by the People Liberation Army convoy outside the cave.

Nama flicked the imaginary burning cigarette at the somber human camera.

“Sell out your family.” Nama shook his head, “Look at you, a cameraman for Ookamiotoko snuff films.”

“Nama!” Sato called out to Nama for discipline.

“This is the fourth mine and maybe the last. Back to the Osaka prefecture! Women! Kakuseizai! Women.” Sato whispered.

The defeated cyborg rat turned toward Sato.

“Uragirimono!”, Sato raised his hand over his head.

The cyborg looked down mute with his tongue removed, alike all PLA cybernetic captive.

“I just need to find my son and my brother!” Nama said turning back to the assembly line.

Nama received an incoming gold bar.

He waited for the second bar.

Standing in line, he waited for the third.

The third clapped atop the second.

A guard barked toward their direction.

The PLA lapdog was focused on another laborer.

Nama turned toward Sato.

Taking a knee near Sato.

Sato shoved the cyborg forward before taking a knee himself.

“I figure, half an hour left!”

“The bars are always last. No crates today either? Why the fuck we moving these one by one?”

“Some weird Chinese torture shit probably…”

“I’d take the frigid haunted wind over this humid Filipino hell any day.”

Sato snickered and nodded in agreement.

As he looked up at me. Sato fixed his gaze to a lump coming from the side of my muddy black leather boots.

“Rhodium and platinum heart locket piece. The jewel inside is…”

The chain had already managed to burrow into a crevasse of discomfort under Nama’s foot.

He pretended to nurse an itch and looked over his shoulder to check for guards.

Sato remained in suspense for what was inside.

Nama looked into the center of his eye and smiled like the devil before god.

“An Emerald Gem. At least 888 Million Yen at least!”

Sato’s face became healthy again. His fatigue was absent and a joy was begging to escape from his ability to act casual.

“Victims of our own subservience. Betrayed by respecting the wishes of our elders. We honored their wishes for a civil life, a life absent of blood feuds…” Nama maneuvered lump above his ankle to disguise the score of his heist as best he could.

“My grandfather’s yakuza will reign again. The common man will govern over the frauds of government. The ones who deceived our families good intentions; for a dishonorable and deceptive assault for control. Truce no more!”

Nama replace the mud crusted black denim over his boot, as the two stood back in line.

“No more Sato! Never again. Exclusion laws killed Yakuza. Made our youth lady boys. From a small fortune the bloodline of Yamaguchi Gumi, You, Sato and the Inagawa Kai”

Nodding his head back behind them, “Masashi, his Kodo Kai. Yes!”

Sato smirked and observed Nama with an excitement in his eyes, an energy that motivated his plans, as if it were fate, “We will start with assassinating the bankers, treasury diplomats, and any Diet who had any financial interest prior to the nations siege.”

Sato’s smirk was becoming an uncontrollable thirst for revenge.

“Ookamiotko!” Sato said.

Gold bars clanked toward their position in line. Trailed by the heavy mouth breathing abominations, serving only their need to kill.

Nama handed off the stack of three to Sato and turned toward the next wave of gold bars incoming.

“Don’t let our skin touch! Pass them with your hands on the ends. Or better, just toss them to me.” Nama said to the Cyborg.

The high risk of an honorable death made Nama more charged.

His energy was as tall as, Mount Aso. His blood was tapped into the Ether. The revenge fueled by the memories of his nations rape. The long death and oppression of the “gangsters” who built and accrued the wealth for the turncoat bureaucrats.

A dormant savage rage was coming to life. A campaign of terror was being formulated.

Nama ran his hands toward the back of his head. Collecting his hair to tie off with his deceased wife’s hair tie.

Waves of blood and plans of treachery were a tsunami of chivalrous rage.

A wave of crime was swelling deep in his imagination.

The labor became fun behind the endless ideas of counter insurgency, a thirst for blood, a reclamation of the nation. Through relentless merciless violence.

Before Nama could even realize just how close the realities of this were coming true. The gold bars were being passed down the line more and more intermittent.

Nama stood tall and immovable.

“Burakumin!” An armored vehicle commanded the laborers from the entrance of the cave.

The cyborgs among the laborers synched to the commands of the instruction coming from the armored vehicle.

Nama remained mute inside the focus of his mind. He opened his eyes to the sight of men dressing the uniformity of the marching unit.

Howls from the Ookamiotoko echoed from the entrance. The engines of the convoy began to rumble. Nama grinded his teeth, breathing slow, controlling his rage, and recalled the joy of violence.

After ten minutes of the PLA playing games. Nama got comfortable where he stood immovable.

Reimaging his first sight of the brilliant cut emerald gem within the heart locket, still concealed in his boot.

Another ten minutes, something was off, Nama could peak toward the exit.

“The sun is already begging to set.”

Nothing from the armored truck.

Still, no one moved.

Sato leaned forward, “What’s taking so long? Should we go up there?”

Nama could not help but already be in favor of seeking answers to Sato’s concern.

“We still had at four-mile march back to camp…”

“GOKUUUDO!”

“Kisama!”, Nama sprinted off toward the call to arms, from the front of the line.

Sato and Masashi followed Nama sprinting uphill toward the Mouth of the Mountainside.

Bright beams of blue lights activated and tracked Nama and his trailing soldiers.

Nama could hear a commotion through the darkness coming to a confluence of natural light.

Laborers from the front of the line were begging to run away from a skirmish occurring at the entrance.

A tungsten railgun round went through at least ten laborers.

Ookamiotko hybrid soldiers cornered Nama’s kobun, Komada.

A decapitated werewolf laid at his feet.

“Komada!” Nama yelled for his cornered friend.

Komada focused on the enemies closing in on him. He raised the dead PLA sword overhead.

A few of the laborers managed to wrestle away the rail gun from the guard.

Mindless loyal mutts charged them.

Nama was filled with pure clarity to perform his art of death. A bloodlust in his eyes.

“They are going to detonate the opening. Trap us in …” Komada yelled, as four of the hybrid wolf soldiers were surrounding him, “Get the Rail Gun!”.

Another werewolf was decapitated before Komada was overpowered and mutilated.

“Nama!”, Sato yelled in pursuit.

The child laborer was in a panic, pulling the trigger with no rounds discharged.

“Oy!!” Nama yelled sprinting toward the kid.

The kids face was filled with fear. The PLA hounds climbed toward him on the walls and through the mud.

Just as the kid tossed the rail gun.

Nama was thrown through the air from the explosion at the mouth of the mountain.

He laid on his side, gasping for air. Attempting to sit up and press forward. He kept fighting for air pressing himself to sit up. His hands singed on the hot ruble from the explosion. Nama felt no pain and was catching his breathe and equilibrium. Stumbling to his knee and in his blind fury. Looked up at the caved in opening.

He could still hear the diesel engines. The howls and psychotic laughter for more violence from the Ookamiotoko.

“Disgraceful! Dishonors! Horde of ShINA PIGS!”

A hatred began to fill unlike any he had ever felt.

To his knees now.

Moving toward the boulders sealing them inside.

Sato and Masashi laid coughing in the mud, catching their wind.

“Oy! Lapdogs! Slop Piglet Shina cowards!”

Nama worked his way to his feet toward the caved in barrier.

Sato watched the surveillance cyborgs move forward watching Nama from behind.

Nama opened his eyes to an uncorrectable blinding blur. The partial sight he had was the illuminating blue lights broadcasting the young Ronin, backstabbed by the PLA who could never trust a yakuza among the underworld with the locations of this cave and the other three treasure stashes.

Nama pressed his head against the wall leaning forward with his hands over his head.

The thought of this being broadcasted for PLA propaganda.

Buckled Nama to his knees.

“My name is Nama Yamamoto Yamaguchi-gumi, known to the Kobe underworld as, Akuma. The great grandchild of founding Oyabun! Im the second son of Itsuki Yamamoto!!”

Sato and Masashi stared up from the ground watching ruble begin to levitate off the mud.

“I am your wraith of death! I am the murder of your sons! The kidnappings of your daughters! The poison for your wife. You will not know an enemy worse than me!”

With an anomaly of projection, Nama’s anger echoed within the chamber.

Nama’s grief had been purged from the hopelessness of the double cross.

“Remember my name! Akuma! I am the Akaguchi to your morning star! Drinking your blood from any nation you bleed upon. My red tongue feasting on the decomposition of the earth you rot. Remember me through every future misfortune! Every mutilation that wretches your stomach! I am your omen of death! The ONRYO in a relentless pursuit of your masters head and the head of his heirs.”

Nama fell to his knees his fist pounded into the walls cracking the boulders. Mud separated from under him with an unseen force. His heart bounded from his chest. His eyes turned red and he breathed in short maddening screams. Blood streamed from his eyes as he accepted leaving his son in the material form.

Steam was rising above his body. His back denim began to char from the inside. His dirt smeared black t-shirt began to burst into embers and smoke.

He banged his fist into the large mountain boulders.

“KAZAN!” his blood vessels in his arms, neck and the temples of his head bulged and some began to burst.

Nama’s voice seemed to be the source of the unexplainable echoes. It morphed fully into a demon as he kept screaming his son’s name.

The temperature around them began to burn the flesh of any in the proximity.

His raging yells, turned to a haunting laughter. The cyborgs recording the incident began to short circuit. Their knees buckled collapsing them to the floor.

Sato looked at Masashi with an immediate understanding that these approaching seconds would be there last in this material realm.

To their knees, they awaited their exit into a new realm.

“Xian!” The PLA lapdogs could no longer be heard in a feeding frenzy behind the mountain barriers holding Nama back.

“You’ll be first!

The haunting guttural laughter was bouncing out and around the walls as if it came from the skies below.

The cyborgs caught fire in a spontaneous combustion. The material space around Nama became distorted and fragmented. His loud battle cries propelled ruble around the cave.

Sato saw a black cloud began to engulf Nama.

A storm swirling within the forcefield Nama was channeling.

The prophecy of Nama’s retribution was an astral whirlwind of death about to be released.

Horns emerged.

Sato smiled.

An explosion.

Free from Flesh.