James looked down at the still form of the Dragon-blood executive. He could feel the hurt from his bruises starting. He really didn’t have the headspace for whatever Harue was doing.

  “What kind of trap?” he asked, still staring at the defeated… alien? Spirit? Whatever it was, in front of him.

  Did I save that guy’s life by knocking him out? Did I want to save him?

  He looked at his companions while Harue answered. None of them seemed interested in finishing the guy off.

  “This is why I hate dealing with formation experts,” Harue started. James scowled, remembering that she’d sent them to deal with the formations.

  “So, I got into the vault okay,” Harue continued, “But there was another formation to stop spirits, only this one was inside out.”

  “What does that mean?” James asked.

  “It means, instead of keeping spirits out, it keeps spirits in,” Harue answered. “The good news is that they were smart enough not to put the formation in the vault, so it must be out there where you are.”

  “Does it need to be near the vault?” Mitsue asked.

  “It needs to be touching the vault, or near enough,” Harue said.

  “It’s probably covered up by a whiteboard, a posterboard or a motivational poster,” Luc said. “Just about every vertical surface on that floor is covered with one of those.”

  “Where’s the vault?” James asked. “Luc said he was having trouble finding it.”

  “It’s pretty central, I think it might be at the back of the elevator shaft,” Harue said. “It’s easy enough to find if you just ignore all the cubicle walls.”

  “We can’t exactly do that,” James said wryly.

  “Sure you can!” Harue said brightly. “Kana can make a path for you, no problem. I’m pretty sure none of the walls are load-bearing.”

  “Understood.” Kana nodded with satisfaction.

  “That’s not an option!” James prostested. “For one, there are still people in there.”

  “The civilians are a problem,” Amilie agreed. “Luc, can we get them to evacuate or something?”

  “I can set off the fire alarm?” Luc suggested. “They haven’t noticed any of the other alarms you set off, but that one should sound on all floors.”

  “Ah, takes me back to elementary school,” Harue said. “Fun times.”

  “Do it,” Amilie said. A moment later, they could hear the muffled sound of alarms going off on the floor below.

  “I can hear that,” Harue reported.

  “Yeah, they’re reacting to that,” Luc said. “They’re taking it pretty calmly, but they’re getting up and getting ready to leave.”

  “Great!” Harue said. “Hope to see you soon. But there’s something else we need to cover.”

  “What’s that?” James asked.

  “Well, I think I might have mentioned that I’m in the vault,” Harue said. “And there are only two things in here.”

  “What are they?” Amilie asked sharply.

  “Well, one of them is a big-ass sword,” Harue said. “And I mean, really big. It might not be as long as your spear, but they say it’s width that really counts.”

  “That sounds like La Fendoir,” Amilie said.

  “Right, well, the only problem is, that hunk of metal isn’t magical. At all.”

  Gérard said something in French that was probably swearing.

  “That’s not necessarily a problem,” Amilie said. “The form of the weapon isn’t the magical part. There should be a gem that attaches to the crossguard that holds the magic.”

  “Hold on, guys,” Luc put in, “Something’s happening.”

  “Yeah, the gem is missing,” Harue confirmed. “And you know what? There is a yellow stone that’s just packed with magic sitting here.”

  “Guys,” Luc said urgently. “I just got shut out of the building cameras. Setting off the alarms must have alerted them to my presence. You don’t have overwatch anymore.”

  “That would be our artifact,” Amilie said. “It should just attach itself if you put it near the correct position.”

  “Huh. See, the thing is, my compass is pointing at it. Which would make it the artifact that we’re looking for.”

  “There’s just one artifact in the vault,” Amilie said slowly. “We’re after the same thing.”

  “Finally,” Kana said. Then her tail whipped around, striking Amilie so hard that she flew through the wall.

  “Kana!” James yelled. “Amilie!” was his second thought. Somehow, she had managed to get her spear in front of Kana’s blow. A blue light had sprung up around her, cushioning her impact with the wall. The wall shattered, only slowing her, but she managed to land on her feet. She gripped her spear and grinned fiercely.

  “Time for that reasonable discussion we were talking about.”

  “Gérard, get them out,” Luc said over the radio. “I’ve been locked out; the building will be going into lockdown at any moment.”

  “Hey, hey!” Harue protested. “Whatever happened to ‘never leave a cute fox behind!’?”

  “Your dragon is fighting our girl, and you want us to rescue you?” Gérard snarled. “Make your own way out!”

  James thought the whole discussion was purposeless. Neither Kana nor Amilie showed any sign of backing down or leaving. Kana tried breathing lightning bolts, but Amilie just waved her spear to intercept them. Kana’s dragon mouth gave a terrifying grin.

  “This will be entertaining,” she growled. Amilie grinned back.

  “Come at me, big girl.”

  Kana snarled and leapt through the hole in the wall, smashing it out a little larger.

  “Guys! Guys! I can fix this!” Harue insisted over the radio. “But you have to get me out!”

  Mitsue and James looked at each other.

  “Kana would not want our help,” Mitsue said.

  “And those office workers should have cleared out by now,” James said. They both nodded and went for the stairs. The crash of expensive office furniture echoed behind them.

  James opened the fire door, only to be confronted by a Japanese man in a suit, about to open the door from the other side. They blinked at each other.

  “What are you—” James started to say, before he was pulled back.

  “Watch out!” Mitsue snapped, as a black knife swept past James’s face. It hadn’t come from the guy standing in front of James. That guy stepped forward into the room, eyes moving, taking in every detail of the two boys and the fight going on nearby.

  The knife had come from the salaryman behind him. The first salaryman looked at James and flicked his arms downwards. Two long, straight knives, about as long as the man’s forearms, fell into his hands.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Hasshin!” he called, and lunged towards James.

  The other salarymen started boiling out of the stairwell.

  James barely had the presence of mind to put up an armoured arm to block the man’s strike.

  “What? What!” was all he could say.

  “They’re ninjas!” Mitsue shouted, blade busy with another suited attacker. “It really was a trap!”

  “I mean, I told you it was,” Harue said. “What’s going on up there? Are you coming to rescue me or not?”

  James didn’t have time to answer. He was stronger and faster than the guy he was fighting, but the ninja seemed to flow around his simple strikes like water. He might be able to deal with that, but he was already fighting a second one. More were coming. He didn’t have time to look, but the frantic clashing of blades told him that Mitsue was equally hard-pressed.

  There was an enormous crash from behind him.

  “Immune to dragon magic, you might be,” Kana said smugly. “But are you immune to concrete falling on you? I think not.”

  “I’m tougher than I look,” Amilie said. “And we’re up pretty high. There’s only so many floors you can drop on me.”

  That did not sound good. The next thing James heard was a snarl of frustration as a knife slipped into his back—or would have if his armour hadn’t stopped it. James whipped his free arm around, but hit nothing.

  Grim-faced salarymen were everywhere that James looked, surrounding him. He couldn’t even see Mitsue anymore; they’d been separated—or Mitsue had slipped away again.

  “Mitsue!” James called in desperation. His answer was a glass perfume bottle flying through the air towards him, glinting in the fluorescent lights.

  It exploded. James screamed as hot gas and fire washed over him, but his armour protected him from the worst of it. The ninja salarymen were not so lucky. The one in front of him was flung into James, almost knocking him back, before slumping to the ground. The one next to him screamed at the pain of his flesh burning, before a blow from James’s sword put him out of his misery.

  It was the first time he had hit one of them. The ninjas around him now were injured and stunned, and James managed to take down two more before they recovered. That still left more than James could count, though.

  “A little gift from Camille,” Mitsue said. “I gambled on you being tougher than they were.”

  James could see him now, standing in his own pile of bodies, both injured and unmoving. James was starting to have trouble with his footwork.

  “We need to get out of here,” James said. He wasn’t sure if he meant the building or just this room, but Mitsue nodded. He threw another perfume bottle over the ninja’s heads and into the stairwell. Suited men dived in every direction.

  Another blade tried to find a weak spot in James’s armour, but failed. He swiped furiously around himself, keeping the ninjas at bay, but connecting with nothing.

  The second perfume bottle went off, and Mitsue staggered forward. While he’d dealt with more attackers than James, he had not escaped uninjured. James could see blood staining his side and leg.

  “Get… down to the vault,” Mitsue said.

  It was a little better on the stairwell. There were still ninjas, but they were only ahead and behind. Below and above. Mitsue covered the front, managing to injure or force back the ninjas blocking the way. James covered the back. Still unable to hit any of the skilled adversaries, he managed to block all the blows coming from that direction, his strength able to overcome the height advantage that those behind him enjoyed.

  They reached the eighth floor, at the cost of another injury for Mitsue and innumerable bruises for James. The floor had emptied out before they got there, but the ninjas chose to fall back down the stairwell, rather than back into the floor.

  “Find the vault,” James said. “I’ll hold the door here.”

  Mitsue nodded grimly and limped into the office. James really hoped there weren’t any ninjas hidden in there. He turned his back on the potential problem and faced the doorway.

  He’d learned his lesson from the dragon blood. In the doorway, the salarymen could only approach one at a time. As long as he held this position, they couldn’t overwhelm him.

  “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s see how you dodge when you’re in a doorway.”

  There was another massive crash from above. The ninjas were professionals. They backed away before looking up nervously.

  “Kana! Are you trying to bring the building down?”

  “That is one of my goals,” Kana said. “I did say the building had to be destroyed, did I not?”

  “We’re still in the building! We’ll die!”

  “I’ll be fine!” Harue piped up. “And collapsing the building would probably get rid of this pesky trap!”

  “We’d die! The humans!”

  There was a pause. “I’m sure you would be fine,” Kana eventually said. “Your armour is very sturdy.”

  “Mitsue doesn’t have armour! He’d die!”

  “Hrrm,” Kana rumbled. There was another, lesser crash from above. “That is inconvenient.”

  The salarymen had apparently become convinced that the stairwell wasn’t going to collapse on them and returned to the attack. They didn’t approach, just probed his defences with knives and needles. Accurate as they were, they weren’t good enough to find the gaps in his armour—if there were any.

  Frustrated, one of them threw a pot at his feet. He tried to kick it away, but it shattered on the ground. White smoke started billowing up.

  To James’s surprise, he didn’t start immediately coughing. His armour must filter gas out as well. But the smoke kept filling the stairwell. It started as haze, and quickly started becoming impenetrable.

  “Mitsue, I hope you’re almost done, because I think they’re going to start getting past me,” James warned.

  “I am almost certain it is on one of these walls,” Mitsue said cryptically. “Get ready in three… two… one.”

  Another explosion rattled the walls behind James. This one was larger, but further away. James was becoming inured.

  “Is that… what was?” James stammered.

  “Thank you so much, Mitsue-san,” Harue said. Her voice was in his ear, then she was flicking past him, into the smoke. She glanced back at him and gave him a grin before she disappeared. He had just enough time to see that her ears and tail were out. As were her claws.

  Then the screaming started. It was just one voice, but it was loud, and it didn’t stop. It wasn’t the scream of someone who had been injured. It was the scream of someone suffering, someone who desperately wanted the pain to stop but couldn’t form the words to beg.

  Then it stopped. A spray of blood came out of the smoke, hitting James with a few drops.

  “Do these things keep out the smoke?” Harue’s voice was a little muffled, but James could hear her clearly through his earpiece. “That’s handy. I’ve got a few questions for you guys. Do you know anything about the wards in here?”

  Another scream started. Mitsue came up and stood next to James.

  “Is that… Harue in there?” he asked. “She seemed… different when I let her out.”

  “Do you know how spirits get, when you trap them like that?” Harue said, as if in answer. She wasn’t talking to them, though, James thought. She was talking to whoever was screaming. His cries were starting to weaken, as if his strength was fading.

  “We get… so hungry,” she said. The second screamer faded out, and James could hear the sound of running footsteps.

  “Harue!” James shouted. For a moment, there was silence. The footsteps were gone, the screaming had stopped.

  “What.” Harue’s voice was colder than James had ever heard it. He swallowed.

  “You said… You could stop Kana’s fight with Amilie.”

  “Oh,” Harue said. “That.”

  There was another pause. “Oh, fine,” Harue eventually said. “Meet me on the tenth floor. I have to make a quick detour.”

  There was a wet thud, and the smoke swirled, as if responding to sudden movement. James looked at Mitsue.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I… will be fine,” Mitsue answered. “My wounds are all superficial.”

  “Have you got anything for this smoke?”

  Mitsue considered and drew out another perfume bottle. He shook it appraisingly.

  “Something that isn’t a grenade?” James clarified.

  “It’s already clearing,” Mitsue pointed out. “Where do you think Harue went?”

  It was true. James made sure Mitsue had his mouth covered and started heading up.

  “We can all still hear each other, right?” James asked. “Even if Kana isn’t paying attention.”

  “I can hear you just fine,” Kana put in. “Destroying this cocky jailbait does not take all of my attention.”

  “Jailbait?” Amilie cried over the airwaves. “I’m older than you, kid!”

  There was another massive crash.

  “The fact that you were distracted means I was using it correctly,” Kana said smugly. “I will have to commend the Gamer Club on the quality of their instruction.”

  “Don’t think I’m finished yet!” Amilie declared.

  Kana tsked with irritation.

  “Harue, stop being mysterious and end the fight!” James called.

  “You’ve got no sense of drama,” Harue childed. “This is a show, don’t tell, situation, and I’m waiting on my audience.”

  James swore in frustration, but he’d reached the tenth floor. He stepped over the fallen fire door into a scene of devastation. There was almost nothing left of the executive suite they had just left.

  Most of the damage could be laid at Kana’s feet. Lightning had scoured almost every visible surface, leaving distinctive scars. A few, more linear, furrows might have been due to Amilie’s spear. The roof was caved in… just about everywhere. Since the floor above was the executive office scaled for a dragon, that meant the roof was three floors high in most places.

  The two combatants were looking much the worse for wear. Amilie was wielding her spear one-handed; her left arm had been tucked into her torn shirt. Kana looked worse; she was bleeding from multiple gashes on her flank and one on her face.

  Unlike most of the other times she had been injured, the wounds weren’t closing.

  “Harue!” he called again.

  “Tada!” Harue said, appearing equidistant from both combatants. She had a massive sword on her shoulder.

  “La Fendoir!” Amilie exclaimed. She took a step forward but stopped, looking warily at Kana.

  “Yes, ra fendowa,” Harue said. “You’ll notice that I put the gem back on.”

  “Why would you do that?” Kana snarled. “The gem is what we came for; we don’t need the hunk of metal!”

  “I got curious,” Harue said. “It’s not like I had anything else to do when I was trapped in the vault.”

  Her ears went back, and her eyes burned with a red flame. James took an involuntary step back.

  “So I happened to notice something,” she continued, as if nothing had occurred. “See?”

  She held the sword out with one hand, improbably easily, given how heavy it must be. Her other hand held the compass.

  For the first time since James had returned to this floor, Kana’s eyes flicked away from Amilie.

  “It’s not pointing at the sword,” she said.

  “I don’t get it,” Amilie said.

  “It means your sword isn’t the artifact we were looking for,” Harue told her.

  “But the stone is!” Kana protested. “That is what belongs to us.”

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” Harue said. “It's not like James sword, or the ryūkoku no ya. They don't have gems that come off.”

  “So, what is it, then?” James asked.

  “I think that someone reversed-engineered one of the artifacts and made these,” Harue said. “So when the stone is on its own, it registers as an artifact, but when it’s working, it doesn’t.”

  “It’s still a valuable magical artifact,” Kana suggested.

  “That belongs to the Georgians,” James said. “We’re not thieves.”

  “Or vandals,” he muttered, looking around the room.

  Amilie looked at them all warily and then lowered her spear.

  “Shall we call it a draw, then?” she asked.

  “I suppose,” Kana grumbled. “This has been a very unsatisfactory trip.”