SNAFU: Hunters

The Staff Sergeant dropped her rifle and brandished her Kukri, more than willing to oblige. Together she and her sister attacked. Sierra went low and Tango high. For every wound the women made on their adversary he returned it twofold. His fists were sledgehammers, brutal blows crashing into the sisters, stealing their strength and pounding flesh. His knees and elbows and feet darted like serpents to take advantage of any opening. Above all else Sierra and Tango avoided his clutching fingers. They understood that were he to grab hold of them it would mean their lives. Still they fought on, pushing him deeper and deeper into the depths of the mine.

As they battled, the sisters using speed to counter the mod’s advantage of strength and constitution, Tango landed a strike deep into the meat of the rogue’s bicep only to have her blade lodge in the bone. She lost her grip when he knocked her backwards. Sierra closed on him then, dragging her blade across the rogue’s femoral artery but he kicked her into the wall and proceeded to stamp down on her knife hand. She felt her wrist fracture and screamed in agony as her blade slipped loose of her fingers. He shattered it with his heel and backed away with a lopsided grin.

“I’m impressed, little kitties. You’ve done well,” the rogue told them, yanking Tango’s knife out with a flourish, “but not well enough.” He let loose a rumbling laugh, the sound echoing through the darkness, seeming to go on forever before finally fading. He held up the blade and inspected it, testing its balance, and then dropped into a crouch with his new acquisition gleaming out in front. “Shall we continue?”

Weaponless, injured, and flagging, Sierra glanced at her sister and whispered a farewell with her eyes. They stood no chance of defeating the rogue with only their claws and teeth but his arrogance had offered Sierra an opportunity she could not deny.

Before Tango could grasp what she intended, Sierra murmured a prayer to She Who Mauls, shoved her sister aside, and leapt at the mod. The rogue grinned and welcomed her close only to realize his error when Sierra ducked low at the last moment and crashed into his legs, taking them out from under him. Her momentum carried them forward…

…over the lip of the shaft that had preserved the rogue’s laughter a moment before, dragging it out and warning Sierra of the endless fall that lay just beyond the darkness.

She howled as the blackness enveloped them. Sierra would soon meet the Goddess but she’d do so with a smile on her lips, her sister alive in the tunnel above. That was a victory she was willing to die for.

Two Birds Evan Dicken

Nothing but death dwelt on Mount Kuchisake, at least that's what Izō hoped. An arrow skittered through the branches over his head, followed by a shout from farther down the hill.

"Halt, or the next one will be through your neck." A thin-faced samurai in ornate armor drew another arrow from his quiver.

Izō dodged behind a nearby juniper before the man could take aim, smiling as the shot rattled through the trees before disappearing in the scrub off to Izō's left. Although deadly on open ground, the tall, lopsided horse-bows favored by the samurai would be next to useless on the densely-wooded hill.

After a few ragged breaths Izō was off again. He might not have to fear arrows, but a veritable flock of Akechi clan soldiers scrambled up the broken incline behind him, spears waving like windswept reeds as they sweated in their armor. Mostly ashigaru footmen, hardened veterans of Lord Nobunaga's campaigns around Kyoto, they were far more dangerous than the samurai who'd led them into the woods after Izō. Armored and on horseback he might have picked the spearmen apart, but exhausted, hungry, and armed only with a broken katana, Izō didn't fancy his chances. Fortunately, if the legends about Kuchisake were true, he might not need to fight.

Izō grinned. Two birds with one stone.

Branches whipped across Izō's exposed face and arms, tearing more holes in his once fine kimono. His pursuers called to one another, their excited shouts like the yips of hunting dogs. Dirty and bleeding as he was, Izō must have appeared a far cry from the fierce, hawkish man scowling from the wanted signs the invaders had plastered across the province. He grit his teeth against the shame. Lord Hatano would be mortified to see one of his generals brought so low, but Lord Hatano was dead – betrayed and murdered after Nobunaga promised him safety in exchange for surrender.