What are you?

Previously, Sora and Durandal met with Kenshou and discussed about their purpose for being there. Sora, of course, lied about their intentions and decided to rile them up and give them a push, to at least divert the direction of the story. Who knows, he may be able to leverage this later on for his other missions.

(Night, Western gate)

*Sching!*

With the last Kabane being impaled by Bianka's lance, Sora scanned the surroundings around them to make sure that they didn't leave any stragglers around. Still, he was already sure that some had made it past them due to the resounding screams and fire that suddenly started somewhere far from their current location.

"Alright, we did what we could for now, Bianka, immediately proceed towards the Eastern Gate and provide support to Yomogawa Kenshou, and continue protecting him until we rendezvous." Facing Bianka, Sora repeated his orders, to which she nodded her head in affirmation.

"Understood. I'll be going now, captain." She then crouched forward, and with one powerful push with her right leg, she was already a few meters away from Sora.

"There she goes…time to do my part, no matter how reluctant I might be."

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(Somewhere within the Fortress, because I don't know where exactly these places are where they just pop up)

*Clack!*

After working awkwardly for some time with the lock pick in his hands, the young man, whose name is Ikoma, finally got out of the wooden cage/prison he was put in. Earlier in the day he picked a fight with the Bushi, slandering and dropping mad bars at them, so he was almost either shot then and there or hanged because seppuku would be too much of an honor for a lowly steam smith such as him.

The absence of the guards gave him the leeway to be able to escape, but that would also mean that something really big happened that even the guards had to rush over to whatever it is. He already had an idea of what it was though, due to the faint screams he can hear and the bright orange radiance and the smoke rising in the evening sky. Those couldn't have been caused by people, so the only other cause would be-

"Kabane."

After uttering that word, Ikoma clenched both his teeth and hands, suppressing something building up within him.

"This time for sure…"

As he was about to run, he heard someone call from behind him, that someone was the man he helped earlier this morning.

"Hey! Help me out as well! You can't just leave me here, those things will eat me!"

Stopping in his tracks, Ikoma hesitated a little, until he finally gave in and used the lockpick in his hand and worked away at the lock on the cage of the man.

With a few minutes of effort, the lock opened and he hastily removed the lock from its place. As soon as he did, the cage swung open, hitting him in the face and knocking him back, making him fall on his butt. The cause was the man, after seeing that the lock was removed, he immediately charged at the cage, without any regard to his liberator.

"Ughh…Why'd you done that?! I was going to open your cage either way!" Grasping his now slightly broken and bloody nose, Ikoma looked up at the man, only to see that there was no remorse on his face, only pure fear. He wasn't even paying attention to Ikoma anymore, his eyes red and darting left and right, looking for a route that may even be remotely safe so that he can make his escape.

"…" Looking at the man's expression, Ikoma felt frustration welling up from within him again. If even the Bushi acted like that before, what more ordinary civilians, that do not have weapons that would provide them with at least the minimum amount of security?

Without Ikoma noticing, the man had already fled somewhere, leaving him there alone nursing his nose. Shaking his head slightly, he got up from his position and started moving towards a direction, namely, towards his shack. He had to get something from there, no matter what the cost.

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After a few minutes of running, Ikoma can already see his small shack. It was separated from the other houses, clearly Ikoma's preference of staying away from the other residents. He had created a device he believed could be the possible edge needed to finally, fight back against the Kabane.

"I need to test the device, but in order to do so, I need to lure some kabane inside the shack. Tsk, no way around it…" Kabane are very sensitive to life, much more to blood, since to build the iron-like cage around their hearts, they need the basic element to do so; iron. And iron can be pretty abundant within the earth, but the most easily convenient one in terms of availability and ease of procurement? Blood.

(A/N: Dunno if animals are also within the target range of the kabana, but blood is blood. Also, info about Kabane's preference for blood rather than just humans can be found in the wiki. Ciao~)

He took out the knife he was hiding within the sleeves of his thick smith uniform. He then, after a bit of hesitation, swiped the blade across his wrist, causing blood to erupt from the cut.

*Splurt*

"Gaaaahhh! Damn it, it hurts!" Holding his hand over his cut wrist and applying just enough pressure to lessen the blood flow, Ikoma walked with an unsteady gait toward his shack. Once he got in, he immediately looked for something to wrap over the wound on his wrist, lest he bleeds to death.

After wrapping up his wrist with a cloth lying around, he peeked through the cloth covering the entrance, waiting for one of the many kabane to take notice of his blood and go inside his shack.

He didn't have to wait too long; a silhouette appeared in the distance, walking with slow and uneasy steps as if he was drunk. As the figure was about to walk forwards in the direction it was facing, it stopped. It looked around with its head tilted up, bobbing up and down in a lazy manner. It walked for a bit, and then stood still on one particular spot; where Ikoma slashed his wrist. The blood on the ground was already coagulating a bit, but it didn't fail to get the attention of the figure. It looked up, following the trail of blood, which led to a shack.

"Urghh-uhmm-uh…"

Letting out something between a growl and a moan, the figure moved towards the shack, with a bit of spring in its unsteady steps. Ikoma saw everything, as he was still peeking through the cloth in the doorway. As he saw the kabane heading toward the shack, he immediately ran back within the shack and took out what looked like the steam equipment used to drive bolts into steel plates.

"It took the bait!" 'This time for sure…I won't fail this time!'

…

*Fisshhhh*

An eerie silence permeated the shack Ikoma was in. The only sounds that he could hear are from the pressure of the gun he was holding and a slight ringing. He didn't know if it was from the surroundings or just in his head, but it caused him to be on edge.

…

Tilting his head left and right, Ikoma right now is very tense, even holding his breath unconsciously due to how tense he is.

…

…

More time passed, and Ikoma's taut body slacked off a bit, with him even releasing a long-held breath he didn't know he held back.

'What the hell, where did that thing go? I was pretty sure it was following the-'

*CRASH!!*

His thoughts were suddenly cut-off when a silhouette fell on top of him from the now roof that has a hole. Ikoma right at that moment, feeling the adrenaline rushing throughout his body, tried shaking off the figure that came on top of him, which is a Kabane.

"Ugh, damnit get this shit off of me! Graaaaaahhhh!!!" After tousling around his small shack and knocking items all around, Ikoma finally managed to wrestle himself into a position where he could leverage and place his modified steam gun right on the chest of the kabana still wrestling itself to take a bite out of Ikoma.

"Take this you monster!" *Boom* *Ting* * *Shing*

With the barrel of the steam, gun pointed at the chest of the kabane at point blank range, Ikoma clipped the trigger, and with a burst of air, followed by steel grating against steel sound, the kabane that tried to maul Ikoma immediately lost strength as if a doll whose strings had been cut. The young man then pried himself off of the body laying down on him and rested his back against the wall of the shack, gun still pointed towards the now still body in front of him.

A few more seconds of heavy breathing, it finally dawned on Ikoma that he was able to take down a kabane with just one shot from his gun. "U-Uoooghhh! Did you see that!? I did this! I killed a kabane! My gun did this! Ahahaha!...ehh?"

Ecstatic that his invention did as it was intended to do, Ikoma was boasting to no one, even laughing in the end, but that ended when he felt a slight sting on his upper-right arm. Moving the sleeve covering the area up, he could see a chunk of his flesh gone, with a bit of bone visible and blood spurting from a couple of veins. What got him to finally panic though, was the bluish-violet blight with glowing orange veins beginning to spread from around the exposed chunk of skin and flesh.

And as the realization of turning into the thing that he hated the most in this living world, Ikoma immediately moved, and although he hadn't tested this particular theory even once, he was determined to go through with it, even if it meant death, just as long as he doesn't become one of those things.

With this goal in mind, Ikoma rushed to another corner of his shack. He then wrapped a combination of leather and wrought iron around the infected area of the arm, and inserted a burning piece of wood there. Searing pain assaulted him, but he had to move fast and moved to a corner of the shack where a contraption of sorts that operated on steam can be seen. Ikoma placed more contraptions on his right shoulder and nailed the contraption to his flesh. Turning some valves, he strapped both his legs near the ankles and around his neck.

After doing all of this, he then raised his hand that had a stone wrapped around said hand. 'It's not a curse! I just need to make sure that the virus doesn't reach my brain! Five years…It's been five years. All the work I put in to finally be able to fight the Kabane…'

Cranking a lever beside him, Ikoma was raised pretty quickly up to the height of the contraption behind him. With the straps on his leg though, he was prevented from reaching all the way up, and the leather strap he placed on his neck tightened very quickly, surprising him and causing him to let out choking sounds. Just this action should've been enough to dislocate a normal person's neck, but Ikoma by sheer will pushed through and demonstrated strength to withstand the choking he put himself in.

'I'm not the same as I was then. I will never…I will NEVER run again!'

Clenching his right hand, his eyes seemed to radiate an eerie light that bordered between genius and insanity. A few more seconds passed, and as the blight was already about to spread higher up his neck, by some miracle, it receded and disappeared from his body. As soon as he noticed this, Ikoma immediately pulled on the lever, which to Ikoma's relief, lowered him down fairly quickly.

This feeling of relief didn't last long though; in the next second another wall of the shack was destroyed, this time by the kabane that Ikoma was waiting in ambush for. Apparently, it went in another direction for a bit when it heard a distant scream, but went back when it heard the much closer sound of Ikoma and the other kabane's scuffle.

Still weak from the prior event of almost killing himself to try and stop the virus from climbing up his brain, Ikoma could only clench his teeth.

'Is…is this really it? I know that I would probably die by the hands of the kabane, but not this early…not after my first victory…damn it.'

"DAMN IT! YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME!? THEN COME GET ME FUCKER!"

"Grraaaaahhhh!!"

In response to Ikoma's crazy/angry scream, the kabane responded with its guttural scream and lunged towards Ikoma.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The glowing eyes of the kabane, pulsing in an eerie orange glow

The looming shadow of the kabane, inching ever closer to him

But Ikoma didn't close his eyes. He willed himself to. No matter how his mind screamed at him to close them and look away.

He would willingly accept his fate, and never be afraid anymore.

…

..

.

*Whoosh*

*Shing*

*Thud!*

But the pain he was expecting never came. Instead, Ikoma saw a black blur and heard the familiar sound of something being unsheathed, followed by a thud by his side. Mechanically turning his head, he saw the body of the kabane that was just about to give him the hug of his life.

"That was a close one. You alright there kid?"

Hearing this voice, Ikoma faced the direction where the sound came from, and saw the man earlier this day, sheathing the katana with a glowing blue blade to his hip.

"Uhmm, I.."

"Shh, never mind don't answer that. Come with me if you want to live."

And although he was still a bit confused, Ikoma scrambled to his feet, grabbing a red cloth to drape over his upper body and his prototype gun, and after doing so approached the man that saved him.