My Ninja Girl 4 Read online

  “You sound like a robot version of yourself,” Soraya told her.

  “Call Bobi,” Micah said as he stepped over the other side of the room.

  “You rang?” the AI asked inside his bucket, his voice loud for a moment before dimming.

  “We’re ready to go.”

  “That is good news! I was wondering when you would come out. The sky is clear; it’s a nice morning, the birds are chirping, and they are also defecating. There’s a lot of birds defecating on the vehicle at the moment that I’ve had to try to clean off the windows, but I’m not quite able to. Would you be able to bring a rag? I don’t like flying with dirty windows.”

  “Sure,” Micah said. “I’m going to check in with Choro very quickly as well.”

  “Don’t forget your grandmother!”

  “That was implied,” Micah told Bobi. “Call Choro.”

  “Nice, everyone is on the channel. Hello all,” Choro said, his voice clipping out for a moment before maintaining a steady volume. It was clear by the sound that he was speaking to them at a distance, his words a bit harder to make out than Bobi’s. “Ready for the day?”

  “Ready as we will ever be. How’s my grandmother?”

  “I don’t know how she did it, but she actually convinced one of the monks to spend the night with her. Can you believe that? They were up all night and it was… disturbing.”

  A dozen images Micah hoped to never think of again came to him. “Seriously?”

  “I wish I was lying. Hold on, let me check on her,” Choro said.

  Micah heard some rustling around as Choro went to the other room. His grandmother spoke to Choro for a moment, catching him up on the previous night’s proceedings, Micah not able to quite make out what she was saying.

  “Good news,” Choro finally told him. “It wasn’t what I thought. Whew!”

  “I wish it was what you thought!” his grandmother shouted in the background. “I was getting a foot massage from that quiet young man, and I needed some serious work down there as well. What can I say? My nails are thick and he wasn’t that strong, so he fell backward a few times when trying to clip them, which explains the noise. What a weak little bitch. I told him as much, but he was polite and simply moved on to the next toe. I should have kicked him in the face, but I’m trying to behave. What kind of cucked monks does Youseg have around here?”

  I really don’t need to hear this right now, Micah thought, both Bunni and Liza chuckling.

  “It’s not my fault that you’re a light sleeper, Choro. You know who else was a light sleeper? Micah, when he was a baby. I used to take care of him for his parents, and I swear, whenever I felt like visiting the old pleasure zone—you know which one I’m talking about—even if I was in another room, Micah would wake up and start crying…”

  “Please go somewhere else,” Micah told Choro, his cheeks red under his mask.

  “Ugh. I didn’t want to hear any of this nonsense. Is there any way we can put a filter on her? A muzzle maybe?” Soraya asked.

  “Hey, just consider yourself lucky that you’re not the one stuck in a house with her,” said Choro.

  “What? What do you mean by that? I’m hurt! Now shut up and let me talk to my grandson,” he heard her say. “Micah? Sweetie? How are you doing? How are my granddaughters-in-law? Or is it granddaughter-in-laws? Who the fuck cares what it is? Grammarians can eat my bush!”

  “—And… I’m in the other room now,” Choro told him. “I’ll make this quick because it sounds like you need to get moving. I’ve made contact, and everything there is set with Julia. Her channel is open, and once you’re ready, I can connect the two of you. I’ll act as your liaison, of course…”

  “Thanks,” Micah said. “Does she know where you are?”

  “I’m using an encrypted channel to contact her, and even if she could figure it out, she wouldn’t believe it. She did seem more open than I thought she would have been with what we are trying to do, although I didn’t go into great detail so that could change. So maybe some good will come out of this. Good luck today.”

  “Thanks. And… tell my grandmother I love her.”

  “Ha! Will do.”

  “And remind her to behave.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Once they were ready, Micah and the ladies left the Monks of Repose’s weapons cache. They piled into their stolen vehicle, Micah in the backseat between Soraya and Yuri, Liza in the driver’s seat, and Bunni next to her.

  “Here we go,” Bobi announced through the vehicle’s speaker. The craft slowly lifted into the air, buzzing for a moment as it did so. It started to move forward, and then its trajectory tilted toward upward, aimed at Uyanga.

  A terrible sound met Micah’s ears as the vehicle rumbled, an alarm going off. Gravity dropped all around them.

  “We’ve been hit!” Bobi announced as the vehicle started to gain speed again. “I’m going to have to take the craft down unless… unless…” Micah turned to look out the window and spotted a pair of incoming monk vehicles, both with carriage-mounted laser weapons trained on their craft.

  From there, his eyes dropped to the monks and nuns on the ground waiting for their inevitable crash landing, more filing out of one of the transport vehicles.

  It was an ambush.

  The ground came fast, even with the maneuvers Bobi attempted to slow their dissent.

  “Shit!” Liza shouted as they touched down, their craft sliding toward the outer gate of her former nunnery. Their vehicle smashed through the gate and twisted its way into the courtyard before finally coming to a full stop.

  “Is everyone all right?” Micah asked. He ignored the smoke and the sound of Bobi’s voice as it short-circuited, one of the speakers in front punctured by Bunni’s glaive, which had been parked between her legs.

  “We fight, and then we split up,” Yuri said quickly. “We meet in Uyanga. Keep your disguises on, and try not to hit one another.”

  She shouldered out of the back door, Soraya doing the same on the other side. This left Micah seated in the middle, still fumbling in his sidepack to equip his prosthetic gatling gun while simultaneously swallowing the nerves twisting his stomach from their crash landing. Once his weapon was set, and it synced up with his headset, he slipped out of the vehicle as well and ducked behind it, taking a place next to Liza.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me,” she said, the ninjas already engaging several opponents on the other side of their craft by this point.

  “I can send mechas!” Bobi said in Micah’s bucket.

  “No, not yet, not unless they do. Have yours on standby. It looks like we’re going to split up and try to get to Uyanga. Make sure that we are able to communicate with one another, and put out a message to all of us to meet in Uyanga once again. I repeat, everyone, we’re meeting at the shrine in Uyanga.”

  “Got it, will amplify now!” Bobi said.

  Micah shifted his focus to an incoming monk vehicle, which looked like it was about to land in an open space before the giant nun statue, the water in the fountains around it rippling.

  “That’s our ticket,” he said, an idea coming to him.

  “We try to take it?” Liza asked.

  Micah nodded. “Commandeer it. Let’s do this!” Summoning all the guts he could, the adrenaline certainly helping, Micah ran forward, and as he did the ground in front of them was incinerated by more blasts from the sky. Another vehicle, he thought as he dove out of the way, Liza joining him once again.

  The vehicle swooped above them, turned around, and came back to fire for the second time. It was a ballsy move, but Micah aimed his gatling gun at the incoming vehicle, hoping to hit the driver. He began firing on it, and once the flying vehicle got too close, just about to unleash a wave of searing hot lasers, Micah once again went for cover, this time activating the energy shield on his wrist and crouching behind it.

  Pew! Pew! Pew!

  He clenched his eyes shut as it passed again, Micah immediately returning hi
s focus to the undercarriage and firing on it again. He had no idea if this would do the trick, and he was pleasantly surprised when an explosion happened in the air above them, a portion of the craft careening to the side, a whoosh, followed by an explosion that signaled Micah had actually brought it down on the outer walls of the nunnery.

  “I… didn’t expect that,” he told Liza, who had paused, her shoulders frozen for a moment as she processed that Micah had just shot a vehicle out of the air. The fight came to a complete stop as the nuns and monks and ninjas all observed the crash and the explosions that followed.

  Using the distraction to her advantage, Soraya reared up onto the ball of her foot and struck one of the monks across his helmeted face, the man going down immediately, the fight back on. The three ninjas worked overtime to take down their opponents, Micah noticing that Yuri utilized the power she had learned back in Heian.

  The leader of the Royal Star Ninjas swept one of her opponents away by simply gesturing with her hand, the man flying into the large transport vehicle they had arrived in. Bunni got in on the action and quickly did the same, one of them able to use industria to lift a nun several feet in the air before launching her into one of the fountains, toppling the statue.

  Micah returned his focus to reaching the vehicle that they had first spotted. He was just a few feet away when a man in an industria pack landed before him, his armored clothing telling Micah that the man was one of the elite monks.

  The monk reared back to strike Micah with a glowing energy sword; Liza stepped in the way just in time to block it with her two blades, their weapons sparking. She held him back for just a moment, which allowed Micah to unload a series of quick shots into the monk’s torso.

  The man’s armor blocked it from doing any lasting damage, and he was back up on his feet in a matter of seconds. Another monk attempted to strike them. Liza absorbed his blow with her right sword and redistributed the industria, which had the effect of flinging him backward.

  While he would have helped her if he could, Micah was now forced to engage with a nun who had landed beside him, the woman with an energy weapon similar to his, albeit one with two spikes jetting off her knuckles, glowing green with industria. A couple of quick swipes should have finished the job, but something happened on her final attempt, the woman’s fist inches away from his face before she was blown backward.

  Micah had done it; he had once again used the new power he had learned by lassoing her legs with an invisible cable of industria. He wasn’t as strong as Yuri, not able to fling an opponent thirty or forty feet away, but it had worked, and it helped their cause.

  Is my usage amplified by adrenaline? Micah thought, taking a quick look down at his hand. There was no time to follow that rabbit hole, and he was just firing a shot at Liza’s opponent when his gatling gun fizzled out, signaling it was out of juice.

  It was tedious, but Micah quickly dropped and opened his bag to go for a fresh charge pack. He clicked it into place, waited just a second for it to blink, letting him know it was ready. He fired on the feet of the monk engaging Liza, which threw her male opponent off guard to the point that she was finally able to bring him down.

  One of Bunni’s victims, or perhaps Yuri’s, landed on the front of the vehicle that Micah and Liza were planning to use, cratering the window.

  “That was supposed to be our ride…” Liza said.

  “Sorry about that!” Bunni told her, her voice crisp and clear in the bucket helmet.

  A different voice appeared in Micah’s bucket. “Listen up: this is Yuri, and it’s time we start fanning out. There will be more here any minute now, especially with the vehicles that we have wrecked. Good job, Micah, by the way. Reminder: we meet in Uyanga, at the shrine, as discussed. Micah and Liza, head toward the south, to the nearest station. We will do the same but head to the north, and we’ll also try to keep the heat on us so the two of you can get away. The idea is to…” Yuri grunted for a moment as she drove her sword to the opening beneath a nun’s bucket. “The idea is to blend in once we get out of here. Do that. Let’s make this happen!”

  Micah didn’t like it, and he definitely didn’t want to separate himself from the three of them, but now wasn’t the time to question Yuri’s orders.

  Another monk transport vehicle appeared in the sky above them and began lowering toward the courtyard of the nunnery, weapons on its undercarriage firing off a few blasts before returning to their ports.

  Micah and Liza used the distraction of the landing vehicle to make their escape, the two helped by an industria-fueled push from Bunni and Yuri that forced the craft to topple over to its side.

  They reached the street, and from there, they headed south.

  Micah and Liza were a couple blocks away from the nunnery when she reached for his arm and stopped him. “We have a problem.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, finally able to catch his breath.

  “There isn’t a station here that links directly to Uyanga. To get there, we’ll have to travel down to Thunderhama, then take a transport sling up to Uyanga.”

  “An extra step?”

  She nodded.

  “And the others?”

  “They are closer to a station that connects. I’ll relay this to them.” Liza quickly fired off a message.

  She was just finishing up when a pair of roaming monks and a drone spotted them.

  Micah quickly fired his weapon at the drone, taking it out. But the monks had time to land, and as they did, Liza launched into action against them, the nun flourishing both of her swords to block their strikes.

  Giving their opponents leverage was the fact they were boosted by their industria packs, which allowed them to fire down at them. Not one to be deterred, Micah aimed his weapon at one of the packs and squeezed the trigger grip, his blast connecting and sending the man into a streetlamp, which was followed by a spectacular flash of lights. The lamp came down with him, green energy sparking around it. A trashcan not far from where the lamp had landed quickly caught fire, and by the time the man was back on his feet, flames raged all around him.

  Liza took down her opponent, and focused on the incoming monk. She spun just as he landed in front of her and brought her blades across the front of his chest, one of them actually cutting through his armor. A shot to the side courtesy of Micah brought the man down. Liza pressed both blades through his torso, their tips bursting out of his back, followed by an arc of blood. She withdrew them and nodded. “We have to get out of here.”

  After she quickly cleaned her blades and put them away, the two started running, this time heading through a back alley, and from there into someone’s small yard, where a lapdog barked at them. They hopped the fence and ran to another yard, this one featuring a garden with a sitting area. An elderly man coming out of the home yelled at them, but by the time his voice reached Micah’s ears, they’d already hopped the fence and were moving on.

  Micah felt lucky Liza had spent a lot of time in the area, the nun knowing the layout like the back of her hand. Yet this thought sparked another concern for him, one for Yuri and the others: would they be able to find their way to the station? Should he have stayed with them?

  Divide and conquer, Micah thought. Yuri would know best in a situation like this. But this is my world; did I make a mistake?

  Micah suppressed this train of thought. He couldn’t think like this; he could only push onward through any negativity. After running for a few minutes, they came to a deli with outside seating, the people in line wearing masks, a few seated at the tables. Making their way through the crowd wouldn’t have been hard had it not been for an incoming nun, the pedestrians scrambling as she landed and pointed an energy glaive at Micah and Liza.

  “Halt!” she shouted.

  Micah’s first shot clipped her in the shoulder, the second one hitting her directly in the chest, the woman triggering her industria pack and accidentally flying sideways, directly into the deli. Food spilled out, the chef trapped in his kitchen
by the damage the nun had done, the woman now screaming as a scalding pot of hot water spilled onto her.

  “Damn,” Micah said as he looked at Liza, not knowing for certain how they should handle the situation.

  The nun continued to scream as Liza approached her. She drew her blade and stabbed it through her side, completely debilitating her. To the bystanders, it must have been an incredibly odd thing to witness; the Society of Monks fighting one another.

  To Micah, it was quickly becoming more of a tragedy. He had no love for the Society of Monks, but he knew that there were many that simply joined to be part of something, the membership tied to patriotism, or a chance to get out of whatever slum they came from in the Golden Trash District, a few recruits even hailing from the Outer Provinces. There was no way to distinguish good monks and nuns from rotten ones, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was designed that way.

  Which was why they would be able to get out of the situation easily. After all, what would people say? They saw a monk and a nun fight a different nun wearing an industria pack, they killed her, and ran on?

  A thought came to him: what was truly making them a target at the moment was the fact that they weren’t blending in, like other monks would have.

  “Stop,” he told Liza.

  “Why? We have to hurry!”

  “No, we don’t. We take things casually, and we act as if we are looking for us as well. Does that make sense?”

  “Actually…” She nodded, Micah getting a glimpse of his own reflection in the face of her bucket helmet, just a monk talking to a nun.

  Just a monk talking to a nun…

  “I’ll tell the others. Yuri, can you hear me?”

  “I can hear you, Micah,” she replied after a momentary pause in which his heart skipped a beat.

  “Are you okay? What’s happening?”

  “We’re finishing up, and we’re moving out, heading north toward the station with the transport sling. We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about us.”