RuiNin

The ruined state of both his cybernetics and his life marked him as more than just "masterless" – he was ruiNin – an Augmented samurai wandering the wastelands, unable to end his existence lest the dead haunt him even in the afterlife.

RuiNin

The sizzling mist had come up gradually, enshrouding everything as far as the eye could see in every direction. The Augmented samurai had considered retracing his footsteps, eager to avoid swamplands and the more devious wasteland pitfalls. When his internal sensors, sketchy though they were, failed to register anything dangerous to his health however, he proceeded with caution through the landscape of ugly, deformed grasses, omnivorous trees, and murderous jackjaws until he and the crocohound came upon the village.

The short beast growled, its grotesquely jutting oversized jaw dripping with froth as they approached. Before the accursed thing had adopted him, the ruiNin had been planning to eat it. He had inadvertently saved the croco from the belly of an octothon after spying the camouflaged mutant wrapped in the branches of its tree lair, the thick plump of a recent meal hanging like low fruit.

Figuring the leggy monstrosity had probably 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.

He scrutinized the mutie; its big googly eyes fixed on something ahead of it. Still wasn't too late to eat it. "Quiet, cur," he spat, but he felt it, too. Something was off. Among the transcendent horror and serene decay of the viral wastelands, gut instinct was everything.

Here, at the outermost edge of the village, the mist was oddly warm and moist and stank of rotting eggs. Mist density all but hid the decrepit patchwork structures, only hinting at what lay beyond. If he had not passed so close, he might never have even noticed it.

Though incredibly strong, the smell of rotten eggs was neither wholly unfamiliar nor unexpected. He had often enjoyed an afternoon in the sulfurous natural hot springs of his home, and the thought was not without tantalization. He tried to remember the last time he'd had a nice hot bath – and then wished he hadn't.

Pushing the unwanted memories from his mind, the samurai stepped into the village proper, passing a low wall that wouldn't stop a loud fart, let alone a hungry mutant horde. 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 seemed to grow larger as if pleading with him not to go.

"Coward." He shook his head and continued on in. Reaching out with the cybernetics in his head to the signalcasting devices in the area, he was able to start a weak bistatic sweep. Damaged by betrayal and the subsequent years of neglect though produced unreliable data – audiovisual skips, glitches, and memory-leak artifacts.

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

Figures glided by him in the gloom, often too briefly for him to make out, never stopping, never close enough to touch. Their whispered voices carried in the dense, moist air, but never did the subject of their chatter reach his ears. It was different from the snatches of words or the call of hawkers along the crowded paths of the castle cities he had known. It was something akin to the soft background noise of live theater.

Buildings appeared as if being constructed centimeter by centimeter in rhythm to his footfalls. Never whole in his vision, and mostly abandoned, their state of decay depending on the focus of his attention – sharpening and glowing out of the corner of his eye, and then fading to a withered skeleton as he closed or focused. The voices within, too, always seeming to distance themselves just as he stepped within range.

Two children dashed across his path so close he could have touched them. They swerved to avoid knocking into him and disappeared between the structures, squealing wildly, their laughter leaving an echoing trail. A dirty rattan ball followed in their wake along with a third child. Perhaps a boy. The youth ignored the ball, and he too was quickly swallowed by the heavy mists.

"Hey, your ball…" His left hand on his hip, he kept his eyes on his surroundings as he crouched, lowering his whole body to reach for it. It crumbled, leaving a rough grit on his hand.

An audiovisual artifact leaked in from the past, skipping across his vision. You broke it – his daughter accused, running to her mother. He hadn't meant to. But her tears over the loss of a beloved possession were all too raw, too real. For both of them.

"I'm sorry…" he said aloud, "I-I can get you another one. Promise." Soothing words and soft sobs scratched at his encased brain.

A giggle from around a building and she was off after the other children. He was up quickly in pursuit of the muted green of her kimono. "Wait…" He followed through the labyrinthine of houses and shops before he stumbled out into the main street once more. Back where he started?

The mists swirled. The children were gone. Memories and phantoms. The incoherent mumbling of the townspeople returned to its previous din. He took a deep breath to steady himself and clear the uncomfortable sadness the visions had stirred within him, a sadness fueled by funeral pyres and burning revenge.

Continuing on, he came to a well, where he stopped and spared the processing speed to actively scan it. The tall cairn of rocks had a thick covering of moss and the bucket had been partially swallowed by the ground long ago. Below in the depths, the well was dry as a bone. Probably for the best. If there was a natural spring in the area, the sources could have mixed, and it wouldn't do any good to be drinking from it. But that meant the village had to be obtaining their drinking water from an alternate location.

To his right down the lane, a large three-story structure took shape. It was clearly the largest of any he had seen in the village and likely the source of the natural hot spring. Or maybe it was half abandoned as well. He didn't much care. He took a quick look back at the dawg. It was still sitting there. Oddly enough, sharper in image than the very town around him, even through the dense vapor.

It wonked once as he stepped out of sight. Stupid thing.

As he made his way toward the building, a boisterous crowd of denizens suddenly appeared out of the mist from every direction. Their deafening voices were a pinging wave of confusion his sensors couldn't source. Their bodies were a forceful river, pressing against him as if to probing his resolve, and then forward as if to encourage him.

The ruiNin observed the torrent as he closed on the building. He wordlessly took a hard blow from a passing laborer carrying a sack over his shoulder; exchanged a prolonged eye lock with a young woman as she stepped from the dark of a doorway, baring a leg and a smile; and gave wide berth to an old man with a severe cough.

Each and every one of them were all different and yet the same. Dull, gray, silent, and... something more. Something he couldn't put his finger on. It tickled at the back of his brain like a difficult to diagnosis minor malfunction. He let it go. This was the mutant wastelands. If nothing else, they all had the mark of a hard life spent here. Their eyes distant, as if dreaming of another place, another time, or... a quick, merciful death. He could provide them that much. Should he give it to them?

The building loomed before him. This close, he could see it was an old inn of some age. The sliding door was open, and a ratty half-door length noren curtain hung, stained. He sniffed the air once more; the odor of sulfur was strongest here, but it was suffused with the pungent odor of mildew and age as well.

He paused before entering. A soft-sweep hadn't picked up a single blip on his way here, hadn't produced a single warning or identified anything suspicious. Nonetheless, he cast a glance once more behind him. Nothing seemed significant. Everything was as if in a dream.

Holding the curtain aside, he entered, and a man rose behind a small, cramped counter.

"Room and bath." The samurai said and placed his hand over a dusty reader to scan his credits. The machine didn't blink, flash, or even register the attempted transaction. It was more than two centuries old if a day. That it wasn't working was no surprise. But it might have been handy. Now he would have to offer the man something.

He started to mention the croco, but the man behind the counter simply waved him in, never once looking up at him, never speaking. Countryside hospitality? Fear of reprisal? Simpleton? If the world hadn't moved on, the Augmented warrior might have been offended, but he long ago dismissed his right to assume such courtesies.

Still, old hardcoded habits died harder. His auto-reflexes twitched imperceptibly as he thanked the man.

A boy in his early teens came out of the back, bowed deeply, and escorted him to a room on the first floor. The ruiNin would have appreciated one higher, but one look at the once-fine, now-disintegrating stairs told him they probably wouldn't support his weight.

Situated at the back of the inn closest to the bathing area, the room itself was a standard fare of five and a half tatami, yet not wholly unwelcome. The motion-activated paint still lit the room to a decent level, and the futon and covers the bellhop produced from the closet somehow survived all the years of being stored. More than he expected, it was paradise compared to the years of sleeping under the stars, one eye constantly open. Certainly couldn't complain considering the price.

Heading straight for the baths, he entered the men's dressing room, striped down and moved to the main area using the provided cloth to present the appropriate amount of modesty. His synthflesh was burned, ragged, and rough in patches, giving his skin a mottled look that could have easily been corrected with access to a biodoc. Normally, he might have been a little self-conscious, but he drew no attention as he sat on the low stools to wash first, accepting the service of a bare-chested bathing maiden who appeared at his side.

He held out a hand in payment, but she ignored it in favor of losing not a single moment in scrubbing his back, breaking into a friendly chattering mumble he could not make out. He amicably grunted repeatedly as she ardently applied the rough cloth to his muscled back, arms, and buttocks for several minutes. She then doused him with hot water and was gone; the wooden bucket clattering noisily behind him the only indication she was finished.

The steam of the mixed-gender bath rose in heavy clouds, combining with the mist to create a languid haze thicker than the one outdoors. As he stepped into the deep, rock-lined bath to soak, the hot waters rose to his chest. Around him, faint shapes and echoing voices – the seductive titter of a woman, the hurried patter of feet and excited yells of children, and the low rumbling of men discussing some matter of importance to them.

He broke bathing protocol to zoom in on the shapes of the bathers, scanning their forms, but the hardware in his head failed to register a single one of them. The curvaceous form of a woman stepped out of the mists, her cloth strategically placed. Her appearance triggered an indistinct tickle on his soft-sweep, not her directly, but something between the two of them. She rambled incoherently, and expressed 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%. Enough to make out human speech or creature screech at any reasonable distance. She continued on, and he realized that she was carrying on the conversation by herself, uncaring of whether he spoke or not.

He glanced around at the other patrons, this time hard-scanning them, not 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.

He stood and took hold of the woman's arm. She did not seem to notice. It was smooth, not like the skin of a healthy woman, but hairless and unreal. Nor was it like his own synthflesh though which both pleasure and pain were simulated. It lacked any warmth or tangible form. He gave it a hard squeeze, one that would have been close to breaking the bones of a normal human, but she did not cry out, instead continuing to move in her animated monologue. He ripped the towel from her, but she did not react. And now, he could see it. Her body had an unusual recreated sheen – not manufactured, but mimicked. She was realistic, but no part of her was real.

Pain shot through the samurai's left foot and up through his ankle. Instinctively he rolled back onto the rough rock tiling of the washing area only to find long tendrils had penetrated the synthflesh of his cyborg body. Strong and elastic, the appendages anchored him to the floor of the large bath, impeding an escape. Moving to stand, he was yanked forward, slamming him to the wet flooring.

The woman, the smile still affixed to her face, walked toward him and inhumanly stretched her arms outward toward him until her fingers sunk into his shoulders. Her upper body began to shimmy with a slow, hypnotizing sensuality, bending in impossible ways, losing and regaining form repeatedly.

Wordlessly, the entire room of forms began to close in around him.

Bringing his right leg up between himself and the woman, he pressed her away, increasing power when he failed to stop her immediately. They came to a stalemate with his leg at half extension and her full weight upon it in a leaning position. She relinquished her grip, her arms and fingers snapping back soundlessly. Her mouth warped, splitting diagonally as her neck elongated and spiraled forward in a burst of speed.

Jerking to the side, he barely avoided the assault. Her head and face smashed into the stone floor, adhering momentarily before pulling back in a mangled distortion. He unleashed a kick to her lower body that sent her flying and should have disintegrated her pelvis, yet proved to be little more than a slap to her. Slamming into the thick, tall bamboo fencing surrounding the bathing area, she bounced back to her feet for a moment before falling forward into the water and disappearing at the feet of the men.

As the two men reached the side of the waters, still engaged in their mumbling conversion, they vanished as well, unexpectedly sinking into the lip grating of the bath. Reforming from the floor drains behind him, they rushed to press the weight of their knees down upon him and then began to slowly melt over his upper body.

The ruiNin used the concussion stunners loaded in his fingertips to send their puddling forms hurtling back and up into the ceiling. They 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 ceiling 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.

His sensors warning him of closing targets, he surveyed the room to see the man from the counter, the staff boy, the old farming woman, and even the children, all making their way toward him. Their faces were formless and incomplete. They were recognizable only by patterns or color of clothing, bent-over gaits, or repeated garble. They had grouped up tightly, moving in an awkward rocking motion.

Flipping up to face the horde, he fired into them, sending 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.

Stepping back, the samurai placed his hands together on his left hip, pulling back along his body with his left and forward with his right, he drew a quantum Schrödinger's blade with its ever-sharp, nano-thin edge. The blade gleam-screamed through their fingers first, where they dropped around him to writhe and slither into the drainage. He worked his way toward the door, hacking and slicing with precision and speed in an effort to escape.

There were no cries of pain or pleas for mercy, no splash of blood or cleaving of bone, 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.

At last, he made it as far as the well when the stone structure exploded, slamming large rocks into him at great speed. The kinetic energy flung him back into a pitiful hut which then collapsed beneath him.

A column of flesh fountained from the dry well, forming a thick stalk with a ballooning mushroom head. The stalk sprouted a thick flourish of branches over itself like a spreading disease, all of which sported a number of 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.

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 he could contain it no longer, the left half of his face split open, revealing the Ray of the Sun encircling his eye.

The air enshrouding his peaceful visage began to shimmer as it came alive with the surging heat. With each passing moment he held the 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.

Slumping forward, the samurai passed out.

***

When he finally came to, the mist was gone, and 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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Unending gratitude to Jack for all his hard work on the images. Visit Iron Cross Publishing for more great images and fiction.