Bounty Hunters - Shokin Kasegi

Forest Haven Arc: Chapter 128

==A dream on hold==

Erika is already trying to swing her hammer but then notices the grin on Spinless’ face. She turns around and needs to defend herself against a segmented sword, held by a hovering hand, immediately. Spineless laughs as she fails and gets caught, not able to move.

“Borarararara! What a sight! I finally tamed you as well.”

Erika asks, struggling: “What the hell? Why isn’t this stuff magnetic? I can’t move it with the magnetic field!”

“Why would a sword be made out of something magnetic? It needs to be light! Neither iron nor nickel nor cobalt are very light.”, Spineless explains as he looks at her angry face and takes back his hand that was stuck on her hammer, “You probably wonder where that came from. Well, its segments are usually embedded into my back, camouflaged so enemies don’t see it before I use it.”

Erika keeps struggling and shouts: “What are you gonna do now? Kill Raiden or something?”

Spineless tries to calm her: “No no no. What do you think of me? I’m not gonna kill you. The king pays extra if he can still kill you guys himself.”

Erika cries for her life: “What did that king even foist on us?! I’m sure he told the bounty hunters that we kidnapped his daughter but we tried to free her!! We were in the right to go as far as taking her with us!! Yafumi-chan wanted to flee from her horrible father and trusted us even though we were total strangers!! Please, I beg you, do the right thing and let us go!! I won’t ask you to fight with us to free Yafumi-chan but please spare our innocent lives and let us pay you back one day!! Come on! Even though you’re about 90% cybernetic, there’s gotta be some human decency left!”

She begins to cry in her desperation and Spineless gets serious, sounding angry but holding it back: “Human… decency? …Listen here, my job took everything from me! I never wanted to become like this but someone dragged me into it. 14 years, I devoted myself to the dream of getting out of this job and now I’m so close to getting there. I better get this over with before I begin to show any empathy…”

Erika notices the desperation in his voice but keeps shouting: “Don’t come near me!! You’re killing us!”

As her voice can’t reach him anymore, she thinks: “I guess, he has his very own story. It seems like he went down a path of sorrow and after 14 years he finds us as his opportunity to finally break free from his past… I gotta be honest, I think if I were in his situation I would also go this far…”

She then gets taken out by one of the chargeable ropes that make electricity run through her entire body. Spineless carries all their bodies out of the hole, gathering them as a pile. He then goes looking for Ketsuki’s body but notices that his is gone.

Ketsuki walks towards the pile, kneels down and strokes Erika’s hair, mumbling: “You did well. You can be proud of yourself.”

As Ketsuki stands up, he turns around and looks the surprised Spineless directly into his eyes. Spineless tries to rush towards him but realizes quickly that he can’t move anymore.

Ketsuki explains while struggling: “My threads already got inside your body. I can control your every movement now.”

Spineless asks himself loudly: “Why can’t I overpower it? I should be stronger than you! What’s going on?”

Ketsuki walks towards him now and answers: “Yes, you are stronger than me, by a landslide. But if I can control some vital points, I can turn your strongest movements into cat-power level movements.”