Yashin & Jiyu's Ultimate Adventure!

The Brave and Unworthy [40]

The ships landed, one after the other.

With the door opened, Lou led her soldiers through Kwamslak, heading to a large field where Kwam Imperials were waiting. The main seven were hiding behind Lou, nervous. 

Well, all except Akarui who had gone straight to hiding in her mecha, preparing for battle. Seiko and Cyrus already unsheathed their swords as Yashin and Pico held their weapons of choice tightly. Linette and Jiyu had also prepared by Linette skimming her spellbook of anything she needed to remember and Jiyu practising summoning her claws. 

Finally, when they reached the meeting point, they witnessed Itazura slowly emerging from the hoards of Kwam Imperials, using her shadow-like form to levitate above them, making sure she is seen as a superior being. Just below her, three more people emerge, standing by Itazura's side. These three were Charlie, Asutoro and a blonde were-dog, known as Hope. After noticing the were-dog, Jiyu's ears flap down, more frightened. 

The silence was deafening as Itazura's cold, red eyes pierced through the many soldiers that had trained for events like this. Yashin and Jiyu had then accidentally locked eyes with Itazura as Asutoro was also staring intensely at them. 

That's when Itazura broke the silence and floated down, asking in a menacing tone, ''Heh... It's either you give me the gems that you've... 'collected' or I take them myself and you get seriously hurt.'' as Itazura's tone got lower, Lou growled back with passion, ''No.''. Lou stared through Itazura as she gave an enraged expression. Itazura finally had had enough and decided to float back up and kept her stare on Lou. She sighed and then pointed to Lou's army. Finally, she shouted to the top of her lungs, ''ATTACK.''. 

The two swarms of soldiers charged towards each other as they gave their battle cries, attacking their enemy. What was once a hoard of soldiers is now a field-sized battle, each soldier spread out to fight as in the middle, Lou ran straight for Itazura, fighting her head-on. Itazura didn't truly attack back but rather used her powers to taunt Lou, knowing that she wouldn't be able to land a single hit on her. Yashin and Jiyu had stuck together, back to back as they took on multiple soldiers at once. Everything they had learned was running through their heads as suddenly, Asutoro approached Yashin but before either of them could say anything, Jiyu went straight to attack her. Asutoro had then found herself fighting both Yashin and Jiyu. Pico was moving around quite a lot, firing his duel guns at whoever tried to attack as Linette was hiding behind him, using her spellbook to aid her friends and Khojumeno soldiers. Whenever Linette needed to defend herself, she unsheathed the silver sword attached to her belt and used what sword-fighting knowledge she still knew. Seiko and Cyrus were also using their swords, fighting off whoever they had to. That's when Charlie started attacking Seiko and Cyrus immediately fought back. As Cyrus was fighting back Charlie, all Seiko could think about was how he had betrayed them and attempted to kill his friends. With this newfound anger, he charged at Charlie and attacked him alongside Cyrus. Lastly, Akarui was still hiding in her mecha, showing it off as it was able to fight anything around it. The other bots and mechanical weapons she helped make were defending the injured and innocent as Sweet and Sass were also controlling mini mecha's, fighting close to Akarui. Despite their best efforts when fighting, the squad couldn't protect the gems in the end. When Cyrus rushed to defend Seiko from Charlie, he hadn't noticed the gem of Khojumeno Coast fell out of his pocket. The Wytherspear and Nahrahka Island gems had fallen from Yashin and Jiyu's pockets as they failed to see Itazura's shadows sneakily picking up the gems, one by one.

Suddenly, Itazura stopped entertaining herself with Lou's failed attempts at attacking her. She rose from the ground and used her shadow magic to form something like a pentagram and the gems magically lifted themselves to outline it as they glowed a bright light, flashing so big that the fighting stopped, seeing what had happened. 

''Oh no...'' Linette said under her breath, realising the situation. Itazura then gave a maniacal laugh as she thought she had won. Even Asutoro and Charlie had fallen back, watching Itazura. But to everybody's surprise, as one of the gems sparked, they all fell to the ground. Shocked and mad, Itazura quickly floated down to inspect them. Just as she picked up the gem that had sparked, Akarui took that moment to jump out of her mecha and grab the gems from the floor. She grabbed the gems and held them close, clutching them tightly in her hand but before she could turn back, Itazura caught her and held her up by her shirt. After having stared into her eyes for a mere second, Itazura recognised her. ''Oh! It's you, the inventor that worked for me before running away. Honestly, I thought you had gone off to join a circus... I suppose I wasn't too wrong about that.'' Itazura smirked as Akarui could only imagine the shocked and disgusted faces her friends had after finally hearing this information. Even if she wanted to, Akarui couldn't reply because before she was given the opportunity to, Sweet came rushing over as she pushed Itazura back as hard as she could as Akarui kept a firm hold on the gems, running over to her friends once she was free from Itazura's grasp. Unfortunately, Hope used her full form's large, fluffy werewolf tail to smack Sweet to the ground and gruesomely kill her, as revenge for hurting Itazura. Everybody from Khojumeno Coast was speechless as one of their best soldiers and weaponsmiths was just killed before their eyes. Hope then threw Sweet's body toward them as Sass ran over and screamed out the name, ''CATHY, NO, STAY WITH ME, COME ON, PLEASE, I NEED YOU-!''. Sass cried out for her sister as she held her close. Khoju's medics took Sweet's body as Sass followed them onto a ship, holding the hand of her sister. The rest of the Khojumeno military had already fled onto ships as Lou looked back, leaving the squad there. As the Khojumeno Coast military was gone, Itazura had told her men to fall back and leave. Asutoro had quickly opened a portal and left as Charlie and Hope walked back to the Kwamslak President's mansion, retreating as well. There was now just the squad, Itazura and a few remaining hand-picked soldiers, waiting for Itazura's next orders.

Itazura angrily stomped forward, facing the seven. She then exclaimed, ''I now declare that you all are officially exiled from Kwamslak, FOR ALL ETERNITY. Which means~ As long as you're in Kwamslak, I have a right to arrest you.''  Itazura finally smiled as she casually walked back, catching up with Charlie and Hope. While she did this, the remaining soldiers started to chase the squad, shouting over to them that they'll be arrested if caught by them. 

They ran, not saying anything. They didn't want to bring up any of what happened that day. The more they ran, the more they got lost and found themselves in a deep, dark forest. After a while of circling around in the forest, they reached the point of needing a break or they'd collapse. 

As they sat on the ground or leaned on the trees, they realised that they had lost the Kwam Imperials... or they had given up. Either way, the squad was glad to finally rest.

Finally, someone said something. Seiko kept panting slightly as he got out, ''That... was crazy..., It... It all happened... so fast...'' as Pico slid down from his leaning to sit on the ground, looking up at the ceiling of leaves and branches. He then replied, ''Yeah... I almost can't believe it...''. Everyone was still catching their breath as Seiko and Yashin had gone to find a bunch of sticks and fallen branches to make a campfire. After a few minutes, they came back with more than enough and had all set up a small camp, nothing fancy but something that would get them through a night or two. 

Right as they thought they caught a moment of peace, Jiyu's ears twitched as Yashin asked, ''What's wrong, Jiyu, what do you hear?'' as Jiyu looked towards the bushes which had finally started rustling a little louder for all of them to hear. Suddenly, a mysterious stranger with bunny ears arose from the bushes, with a bow drawn back, ready to fire. They looked sternly at the group as everybody readied their weapons, prepared. Finally, the stranger spoke... 

''Who the hell are you?''.