The RuiNin

ruiNin / ˈruːɪniːn /

noun

1. Augmented samurai whose cybernetics have fallen into disrepair but have not yet completely failed.

2. A portmanteau of the English word "ruin" and the Japanese word "nin" meaning "person".

3. A take on the Japanese word "ronin" meaning "masterless samurai".

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The Augmented samurai had considered retracing his footsteps when the animal-sentient mists had gradually enshrouded everything in a thick, hazy interference. His internal sensors, sketchy though they were, maintained the level of danger was acceptable and thus he proceeded through the ugly landscape of deformed grasses, omnivorous trees and murderous jackjaws.

The mists hissed as they probed his wetware security and read the unprotected memories of his flesh-and-blood brain. They spoke to him in his dead daughter's voice, then squeezed and swung his hand in child-like glee as he and his mutant crocohound companion continued silently on their journey.

Escalating their aggression level, the mists scalded his thoughts with his own memories of burning betrayal: of traitorous blades and the floods of blood that swept away an entire fiefdom – and with it, his daimyo lord and family.

Patience, training and time steeled his mind and cybernetic defenses against the onslaught.

Eventually, the mists lost interest and parted to reveal a post town as if it had been there all the while. Maybe it had, and the ruiNin and his companion had simply been wandering in circles for hours. Either way, it was a welcome sight in a time when signs of civilization were growing sketchier by the year.

The plastisteel gates to the wall-enclosed village were stylized on the traditional bottleneck entrances of castles. They were configurable for everything from the passage of a single person to large vehicles or closed altogether. These looked like they hadn't moved in a very long time.

A single guard appeared as they approached, shock baton in hand. If the ruiNin had been approaching a castle or a protectorate village, the man would have demanded the samurai's identification and papers of intent. Instead the guard stood silent, wobbling in place, his expression slack and face slick with a sweaty sheen.

Drunk, sick or both, the ruiNin decided. "This place got a name?"

The guard shrugged languidly.

The ruiNin held out his hand palm up and a holo of a woman sprang to life. It fizzed and spat, and only half the woman's face was displayed. "This woman's name is Tani. She's–"

"Don't know." The man's eyes rolled back and he staggered once before catching himself.

The samurai drew a finger from left eye to jaw. "She has a–"

The guard gave a quirky turn and disappeared into the armored booth that was his post.

The ruiNin followed to press his inquiry, but the booth was empty when he peered through its large window.

Behind him, his short mutie companion growled and barked, its grotesquely jutting, oversized jaw dripping with froth.

Before the accursed thing had adopted him, he had been planning to eat it. He had inadvertently saved the croco from the belly of an octothon after spying the heat signature of the camouflaged serpent wrapped in the branches of its tree lair; the thick plump of a recent meal hanging like low fruit. Figuring the leggy monstrosity had digested enough of its meal to save him some cooking time, he felled and opened the octothon in two strokes, and the blasted croco had popped out alive. Shivering and whimpering in fright, it approached and licked his hand in gratitude. So they had both eaten the octothon instead.

Its big googly eyes fixated on the booth and then quickly moved to different positions about the town, wonking each time. Still wasn't too late to eat it.

"Quiet, cur," he spat, but his gut concurred with the animal.

The ruiNin stepped into the town but the croco held its position and whined.

He turned and gave it a look.

It nervously pranced in place on its stumpy legs, wanting to follow, yet unable to bring itself to do so. Its impossibly big eyes grew larger, pleading with him not to go.

"Coward." He shook his head and continued on in.

Reaching out to the signalcasting devices in the area with the circuitry in his head, he was able to start a weak bistatic sweep. Damage and neglect produced data rife with audiovisual skips, glitches, and memory-leak artifacts.

Like many post towns dotting the vast inhospitable lands of the Shogun's realm, this place stretched out along a single, broad strip of road for nearly a full kilometer. Though in disrepair, it was still the home for the shops, warehouses, inns, restaurants, tea rests, and a plethora of other structures that huddled together for protection and the flimsy promise of economic salvation.

Figures glided by, their heads down or otherwise obscured. Voices crawled out of the pitiful, colorless structures and skulked about him; but within the warren of buildings, the subject of their chatter never reached his ears.

While denizens registered on his targeting overlay, their emotional states read as null. Never hostile, neutral, friendly or even deceptive. Simply unreadable.

A pitiful old woman popped up behind a lean-to and began weeding an even more pitiful patch of land. It wasn't clear what she had planted. Maybe the weeds themselves. They might be good boiled in water. Considering there was so very little else to eat these days, they might have been a fine delicacy to her. She skittered away behind the shabby shack as he passed and did not reappear.

Ahead of him, a large two-story structure took shape – the honjin lodgings. Reserved for court nobles and Augmented samurai like himself, if Tani were here, it would be the most likely place to find her.

An Augmented samurai under the same powerful daimyo as himself, Tani was a brilliant strategist who had defended the Shogun's realm on countless occasions. A leader with the scars to prove it. She would be an invaluable ally in bringing down the four daimyo who had destroyed their home province.

Crossing the main thoroughfare, he spotted the dawg. It was still sitting there, wagging its tail. Oddly enough, sharper in image than the very town around him. It wonked once as he stepped back into the thick of buildings, seemingly desperate for his attention.

His overlay had marked it as friendly.

Stupid thing.

The streets and buildings neighboring the honjin were significantly more crowded. The ruiNin took a hard blow from a passing laborer, exchanged a prolonged look with a young woman standing in the dark of a doorway, and gave wide berth to an old man with a hacking cough.

As with the guard, each of them moved with an unmistakable peculiarity, reminding him of clockwork tea servers – wound up and put in motion for a moment in time and no longer. But who or what was doing the winding? For a brief moment, something behind the old man tickled his sensors and was gone just as quick, like a difficult to diagnose glitch.

The looming building had once been majestic, offering the Shogun's officials and province daimyo lords alike the best the region had to offer: from baths and foods and fresh mounts, to security from the horrors of the outlands. Now, while it still stood proud, there were cracks in the façade and a tilt to its stance. Wild foliage had wrapped its creeping tendrils around the edges of the structure, threatening to snatch the establishment away if one only dared blink.

A sensor trilled and he pushed aside the half-door length noren curtain as the sliding autodoor opened to reveal the entrance area to remove and stow his footwear. The air was suffused with both the welcoming odor of hot sulfur baths and the coarse pungency of mildew and age.

Counter staff performed a coordinated deep bow of welcome, their bodies and expressions unnaturally rigid.

"Room for one." The samurai said and placed his hand over a dusty reader to pay. The reader buzzed and hiccupped before shutting down completely.

"I am terribly sorry." One of the men bowed low.

The ruiNin grunted acknowledgement. How long did he have until the hardware in his own body was as broken as the reader? Would he just fall over along the road someday, hiccupping and buzzing until the mutants found him?

A familiar voice came from the top of the adjacent staircase. "I'll cover his room."

He turned to see Tani descending, her left hand at the ready on her hip. He knew the glow and hum from between her fingers intimately – a Schrödinger blade. One wrong move and she would take his head before he realized it.

***

"We were being hunted when we heard the castle had fallen. Crenshaw, Saijo and I decided to disappear until a better time to avenge presented itself." Tani spoke slowly, her rhythm broken, as if the words refused to be realized.

"Are Crenshaw and Saijo here?" The ruiNin remained stoic but his pulse quickened slightly. Their chances of success increased with each Augmented samurai.

Tani softly shook her head. "Crenshaw never made it off the field – parallactic sniper – and I assisted Saijo about sixteen months ago."

He nodded, their stories were not dissimilar.

Clan commanders like Tani and himself had been sent to separate fronts to turn the tide of a massive mutant horde attacking the borders of four rival daimyo provinces. Though his own province was not in immediate danger, their lord had signed a defensive pact. As a man of his word, he sent his best Augmented samurai troops.

They marched long and hard to bolster the lines of beleaguered defense pact samurai. When his troops arrived at the border, the mad hordes of monsters threw themselves at them by the thousands. And then so did their supposed allies. Even as they were being ground to bones and circuits, they did their duty; and when their work was done they alone stood upon killing fields soaked in the blood of samurai and ichor of mutants alike.

Yet their glory, hollow as it was, turned out to be short-lived. Their return home found every protectorate village between the border and the castle a gallery of screeching carrion eaters, while the castle itself had been hit with an inversion conflagration device. They were helpless to do anything for the souls caught within the influence of the device. They had already begun to twist into ghostly blue-white columns of flame that would burn for eternity.

The remaining few under his command all committed neuralshima to cleanse their karma. In the heavy silence of the castle, he had waited alone for either friend or foe. When neither came, he was tempted to reunite with his wife and daughter. The thought of unfinished business was far more unbearable though – death was a matter of time, retribution was a matter of honor.

Dust motes swirled wistfully in the shafts of waning sunlight through a window behind him.

"I know why you're here," she said. "I'm with you. Before we discuss how we're going to topple the world though, let's bathe and eat."

The heaviness of his heart lifted some. To have a compatriot on your journey was to lighten one's burden. For this he was grateful...

She smiled at him, her face unblemished.

...if only for the gesture.

***

Taking one of the long, narrow cloths for washing and modesty, the ruiNin stepped into the open air communal bathing area. After years of constant travel, his synthflesh was burned and rough in patches, giving his skin a mottled look that could have easily been corrected with access to a castle biodoc. He drew no attention from his fellow bathers though as he sat on a low stool to wash first, accepting the service of a bare-chested bath maiden who appeared at his side.

The young woman broke into a friendly chattering he was unable discern as she applied a rough cloth to his muscled back, arms, and buttocks. He amicably grunted and offered his hand in payment, but after dousing him with hot water, she was gone; the wooden bucket clattering noisily behind him the only indication she was finished.

As he stepped into the rock-lined bath to soak, he broke bathing protocol to scan the other bathers. None of them registered. The curvaceous form of a woman stepped out of the heavy steam, her cloth held high before her. For just a moment, her appearance triggered an indistinct tickle on his soft-sweep. Something directly behind her in the water. It was gone before he could he was able to perform a more detailed scan. She rambled incoherently, expressing interest in him with a look and a promise-laden shift of the towel.

A quick diagnostic on his auditory functions produced a functionality rating of 82%. Both human speech and creature screech should have been clear as a bell at any reasonable distance. He observed as she carried on oblivious to the fact that he did not once reply.

He glanced around at the other patrons. They, too, rambled incoherently. He hardscanned them, beyond caring whether they had the ability to pick it up or not. They moved and spoke as the villagers outside. They slipped in and out of his vision like phantoms. Never more than two or three at a time. One would disappear, and another would come into his peripheral to complete some interaction with the world before vanishing at a moment he did not fully register.

"Like a dream, isn't it?" Tani stepped into the bath before him. "This place is an absolute oasis. There really isn't a need for much. Food, bath."

He nodded. That much wasn't a lie.

"How long?"

"Pardon?"

"How long has Tani been dead?"

The Tani form didn't display a single sign of distress.

"Maybe two years," she replied nonchalantly. "Isn't so bad after a while."

"Is that Tani speaking, or...?"

The form cocked its head in an appearance of honest thought. "Maybe a bit of both. How did you notice?"

"Little things. Like how not one person here seems real. They don't register on my sensors and they disappear all too quickly."

The form nodded. "Can't be helped. They cannot be maintained for too long."

"But the biggest was the scar along the left side of her face."

The form reached up to touch the corresponding side of her unblemished face.

"It was ragged and long. She kept it as a reminder of how close she came to death every day."

The form nodded. "It's hard to remember all the details. If you had come a year ago, you wouldn't have known the difference. However, over time all the personalities and memories of those absorbed bleed together. They form a new, collective consciousness. It's comforting. Never alone. Never happy, angry, hungry... sad." The Tani form leaned forward, reaching for him. "You'll see."

He caught her forearm, gripping it tightly. It had an unusual smoothness to it. Hairless and poreless, it was altogether unreal. Yet nor was it like synthflesh with its simulated range of sensations. This form was not manufactured, but mimicked.

He gave the forearm a hard squeeze, one that would break every bone in an unaugmented arm or revealed any Augmented enhancements.

"It doesn't have to be difficult." The voice was almost sincere.

He shoved her back against the rocks. "I'm sure Tani disagreed."

He stood and stepped from the bath. The Tani form observed from her position against the rocks. In the heavy steam, other forms began to coalesce.

He ignored them, moving toward the exit.

Pain shot through the samurai's left calf and surged up through to his knee. He went to one knee on the rough rock tiling and looked back to find long tendrils had penetrated the synthflesh of his cyborg body. Strong and elastic, they swept down into the waters of the bath back to the Tani form.

The forms ringing him closed in.

The old gardening woman skittered out of the crowd, her fingers elongating until they sunk into his shoulders. With a burst of speed she pulled herself at him, slamming into his upper body, and then began to slowly melt over his upper body.

The ruiNin used the concussion stunners loaded in his fingertips to send her puddling form hurtling back and up into the ceiling. She came down with a large whump and slowly flattened out.

The pain in his leg increased as the tendrils spread up through his calf, subsuming the flesh, weakening it, breaking down the DNA, leaving only a fine network mesh of silicon and quantum circuitry as the tendrils siphoned up the pool of genetic material. The delicate mesh collapsed wetly over the exposed metal framework.

The bath maiden appeared at his side. The smooth skin of her hand morphed into the rough cloth she had used to scrub him earlier. It burned his synthflesh as her touch wormed into his shoulder.

His left arm parted to reveal a plasma disruptor. Jagged bolts of violent energy ripped through the bathing area, passing through the maiden's torso and slamming into the wall with a force that threatened to collapse it.

She staggered drunkenly backward, the whole of her upper-right torso missing, her neck and head limply hanging to the side. Instead of the splatter of gore or spray of blood, there was nothing but a flesh-colored putty. She jabbered pleasantly, indicating her desire to continue scrubbing him down. Several more shots left nothing but the upright portion of a single foot from the ankle down and large, blackened chunks of goo that melted away.

His sensors screamed. The counter staff, the guard, the coughing old man – they were all there, and more were forming all the time. Their faces were formless and their bodies incomplete. Grouped up tightly, they rocked in an awkward motion.

He fired into the horde indiscriminately, spattering more chunks of thick gel about. They cared not. Their arms were stretched outward, fingers extending in long, reaching tendrils. He dodged and blocked the ropey appendages, watching as many combined into thick, heavy masses that fell, writhing, upon the floor, snaking along.

The back of his neck tingled and he turned to see the Tani form hovering before him, the bottom half of her body now a single thick stalk of undefined flesh.

Their eyes met for the briefest of moments during which the ruiNin read an apology there. Reflexes took over and the samurai placed his hands together on his left hip. Pulling back along his body with his left and forward with his right, his quantum blade formed from the Schrödinger potentials at his hip.

The Tani form drew her own and ever-sharp, nano-thin steel clashed, screaming in high-pitched rage as a flurry of blows and counterblows were exchanged within mere moments.

He swept back, severing the tendrils connecting him to the form and switched hands behind him to come up as the form surged at him. They locked hilts as she pressed forward. He kept his stance fluid, ready to move.

"You're good, but you're not her."

He pushed her off and brought his sword up overhead. She readied a defensive move and he swung the blade around and under to take both hands across her forearms. Her blade dropped and destabilized.

An angry inhuman gurgle left her mouth before he performed the coup de grâce, sending her head bouncing off the tall bamboo fencing surrounding the bathing area behind her. Her headless, handless body wavered a moment longer before melting into the water.

He turned on the horde. There were no cries of pain or pleas for mercy, just the song of the blade and the fall of foes. For every one he cut down along the way, though, another would rise up to block his path. With the speed they reproduced, their identities faded until they were little more than formless, colorless stalks. The ruiNin worked his way steadily through the numbers, grinding through the rooms of the building and out into the streets.

He made it to the main thoroughfare when the cracked concrete exploded, slamming huge chunks into him at great speed. The kinetic energy flung him back into a pitiful hut which then collapsed beneath him.

A thick trunk of flesh fountained forth, sprouted flowering branches across its form, each one sporting gaping orifices with too-perfect human teeth and sickly purple lips. Most snapped and clacked their large teeth together, and those that didn't mumbled unintelligible, one-sided dialogues of lives long lost – absorbed, mimicked.

And then Tani. Her face nearly fully formed. It shuddered and vibrated as it struggled to push itself forth out of the menagerie. "Destroy... Save us..."

He stared at the visage, recognized the long scar across her face, watched it struggle helplessly to free itself. Other figures began to press outward as well, desperate to free themselves from the prison of flesh.

Rolling from beneath the remnants of the flimsy structure, the Augmented samurai sat seiza, his legs beneath him, and the palms of his hands on each thigh. He remained perfectly still through a storm of ropey attacks that burrowed into his synthflesh, causing patches to liquefy.

Ignoring the pain and destruction, he visualized his power core as the embodiment of the sun itself, building up an unstoppable energy. When it reached peak potential, the left half of his face split open, revealing the Ray of the Sun encircling his eye.

The air enshrouding him began to shimmer as it came alive with the surging heat and power. With each passing moment he held that power in check, it grew stronger until it impregnated the very space around him with an expanding haze bubble. Between the man and monster, ethereal flecks of luminous energy filled the void like dying stars. And somewhere among them… visions – his wife's soft beauty, his daughter's giggling playfulness, and the croco's mad yelping.

With a resigned sigh that shuddered in his chest, he let go. The resulting blast obliterated the mimic, leaving little more than a light ash that blew away in the soft winds.

Warnings bloomed across his vision blocking out all else as his systems raced to compensate for the extreme expenditure of energy through already overtaxed systems. It was too late. He shut down and fell forward.

***

When he finally opened his eyes once more the sun was beginning to set. The croco rushed him, pressing its oversized head into his face. He pushed it away, and it ran off momentarily before racing back, dropping a small catch before him.

It sat, panting expectantly. He groaned. Internal sensors indicated over seventy-two hours had passed. He eyed the offering. "That's the best you could catch in three days?"

The mutant wonked once and hopped up and down on its stubby legs. Kicking up a cloud of dust, it rushed him, bowled the warrior over, and stuck out its massive blue tongue, covering him in great gobs of sticky, malodorous spit and froth.

Helpless against the onslaught, the ruiNin leaned back against the remnants of the lean-to and took the thing's head in his hands. "You great slobbering fool, I just finished bathing."

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