The ambush point was perfect.
The road cut through a narrow valley, forest pressing close on both sides, limiting visibility and escape routes. Tadano crouched in the underbrush on the north side, Vivi positioned opposite him on the south. Dan waited further up the road, hidden behind a fallen tree, his laser sword ready.
"Transport ETA three minutes," Alfred's voice crackled through their comms. "No additional vehicles detected. Looks like standard escort, as predicted."
"Copy that," Dan whispered. "Everyone ready?"
"Ready," Vivi confirmed, flames already dancing between her fingers.
"Ready," Tadano said.
The waiting was the worst part. His heart hammered against his ribs. This was different from the bounty hunters—those had been people just doing a job. These were Dark soldiers. The enemy. The ones who took children. The ones who'd occupied their world for three thousand years.
No mercy. Not today.
He heard the transport before he saw it—the rumble of heavy wheels on packed earth, the mechanical hum of Dark technology. Then it rounded the bend: a large armored vehicle, six-wheeled, with two soldiers visible in the front cab. Four more soldiers marched alongside—two on each side, weapons ready, armor gleaming in the morning light.
Standard patrol formation. Completely predictable.
Completely doomed.
"Now!" Dan's voice cut through the comm.
The transport entered the kill zone.
Dan's hands glowed green, and the vehicle's engine died instantly—Tech Magic shutting down every electronic system simultaneously. The transport rolled to a stop, momentum dying.
The soldiers reacted immediately, professional training kicking in. Two moved to check the engine. Two took defensive positions. The drivers emerged from the cab, weapons raised.
Six targets. Three revolutionaries.
The odds were even.
Vivi struck first.
A wall of flame erupted across the road behind the transport, cutting off retreat. But this wasn't the wild, uncontrolled fire of her early training. This was focused, shaped, a barrier of heat that turned the air itself into a weapon.
One soldier tried to run through it. The flames reached out like living things, wrapping around his armor, finding gaps, seeping through. His screams lasted three seconds before the superheated air seared his lungs. He collapsed, armor glowing red-hot, the smell of cooking meat filling the air.
Five left.
Tadano moved.
His Cursed Arts sang through him as he closed the distance. The two soldiers nearest him raised their weapons—dark energy rifles that could punch through steel. They fired.
Tadano's sword came up, deflecting the first shot. The energy blast hit his blade and dispersed, scattering harmlessly. Impossible physics made possible by Cursed Arts. His sword cut through the second blast like it was cutting air.
He reached the first soldier before the man could fire again.
His blade found the gap between helmet and chest plate, drove through the soft armor at the neck. Hot blood sprayed as he pulled the sword free. The soldier dropped, hands clutching at the wound, arterial blood pumping between his fingers. He'd bleed out in seconds.
The second soldier swung his rifle like a club, trying to create space. Tadano ducked under the swing, stepped inside the man's guard, and drove his sword up through the soldier's jaw. The blade punched through soft tissue, through the roof of the mouth, into the brain. The soldier's eyes went wide, then empty. Tadano twisted the blade and pulled it free, brain matter sliding off the cursed steel.
Three left.
Dan engaged two soldiers simultaneously, his laser sword a blur of green light. Where Tadano fought with precision, Dan fought with overwhelming technological superiority. His blade cut through the first soldier's rifle, through his armor, through his arm. The limb fell away, cauterized instantly by the laser's heat. The soldier screamed.
Dan didn't let him scream long. The laser sword took his head off in one clean strike. The body stood for a moment, neck stump smoking, then collapsed.
The second soldier managed to land a hit—his blade catching Dan's shoulder, drawing blood. But Dan's Tech Magic had already infiltrated the soldier's armor systems. With a thought, Dan overloaded the armor's power core.
The soldier's chest plate exploded from the inside, shrapnel and flesh erupting outward. He died before he hit the ground, his torso a ruined mess of metal and meat.
One left.
The last soldier—the smartest one—had taken cover behind the disabled transport. He was calling for backup on his comm, his voice high with panic.
Vivi ended the call with a concentrated jet of flame that melted the comm unit to slag. The soldier screamed as the heat washed over him, his face blistering, his eyes boiling in their sockets.
He stumbled out from cover, blind, burning, trying to run anywhere that wasn't here.
Tadano met him with a thrust through the chest. The blade pierced armor, pierced flesh, pierced lung. He felt the resistance as steel ground against spine, then broke through. The soldier's scream became a wet gurgle as blood filled his punctured lung.
Tadano pulled the blade free and stepped back, letting the soldier fall.
Silence fell over the ambush site.
Six soldiers dead in less than two minutes. The transport sat disabled, its cargo waiting to be claimed. Blood pooled on the road, steaming in the cold morning air. The smell of burnt flesh and spilled viscera hung heavy.
Tadano's sword dripped red. He looked at the carnage—the bodies, the blood, the brutal efficiency of their attack.
He felt nothing. No guilt. No horror.
These were the enemy. These were the people who took children. Who enforced the Darks' rule. Who made the Cullings possible.
This was justice.
"Clear," he said into the comm, his voice steady.
"Clear," Dan echoed, deactivating his laser sword. Blood ran down his shoulder where he'd been hit, but he ignored it.
"Clear," Vivi said quietly, her flames dying. She stared at the soldier she'd burned, at the blistered ruin of his face.
"Ten minutes until potential reinforcements," Alfred's voice cut through. "Secure the cargo and move."
They worked quickly, efficiently. Dan's Tech Magic opened the transport's rear doors, revealing crates of equipment—weapons, armor, tech components, supplies. They grabbed what they could carry, prioritizing weapons and valuable tech.
"This is good stuff," Dan said, examining a Dark energy rifle. "Military grade. We can use these, or sell them to other resistance cells."
Tadano loaded crates into the packs they'd brought. His hands were steady despite the blood on his sword, on his arms, splattered across his chest. Combat blood. Enemy blood.
He'd killed three people today. Three human beings, whatever their allegiance.
And he'd do it again without hesitation.
"Movement," Alfred warned. "I'm detecting vehicles approaching from the east. Five minutes."
"Time to go," Dan said, slinging his pack. "Vivi, cover our tracks."
Vivi turned back to the ambush site. Fire erupted from her hands—not the shaped, controlled flames of combat, but raw, hungry fire. It consumed the bodies, the blood, the evidence. Within seconds, the scene was an inferno, erasing their presence.
They ran.
Through the forest, along paths only they knew, carrying stolen equipment and the weight of six lives taken. Behind them, Dark reinforcements arrived to find only burning wreckage and ash.
By the time the sun fully rose, they were back at the facility, passing through the illusion boulder into safety.
Alfred was waiting. "Successful mission. All objectives completed. No serious injuries." His optical sensors focused on Dan's bleeding shoulder. "Mostly."
"It's a scratch," Dan said, though he winced as he pulled off his gear.
"It's a three-inch gash that requires medical attention," Alfred corrected. "Sit. I'll prepare the medical bay."
As Alfred led Dan away, Tadano and Vivi stood in the entrance chamber, still processing what they'd done.
"We killed them," Vivi said quietly. "All of them."
"Yes."
"I thought it would feel different. Worse. But..." She looked at her hands, still smelling of smoke and burned flesh. "I just feel... nothing. Is that wrong?"
"I don't know," Tadano admitted. "But they were the enemy. They served the Darks. They enforced the Cullings."
"Does that make it right?"
"It makes it necessary."
Vivi was quiet for a long moment. Then: "How did you do it? At the start. Your sword appeared in your hand from inside the facility. I saw you leave it on your bed."
Tadano looked at his blade, still stained with blood. "My Cursed Arts evolved. I can summon it now. From any distance, I think. It's... bound to me. Not just when I hold it, but always."
"That's why you've been so quiet lately. You felt it changing."
"I felt something. I just didn't know what until I needed it."
"Show me," Dan said, returning with his shoulder bandaged. Alfred must have worked fast. "Properly, this time. I want to understand what you did."
Tadano set his sword down on a table across the room. Walked away. Turned to face it.
He reached out—not with his hand, but with his will. With the connection that bound blade to bearer. With the Cursed Arts that made the impossible real.
Come.
The sword flew to his hand in a flash of motion, crossing twenty meters instantly, settling into his grip like it had never been away.
"Distance?" Dan asked, analytical mind already working.
"Over a hundred meters. Through walls. Through the illusion barrier. Instantly." Tadano tested the weight of the blade. "I think the range might be unlimited, but I haven't tested further."
"Weapon recall," Dan breathed. "That's... incredibly powerful. You can never truly be disarmed. And in combat, you could throw your sword and recall it, turn it into a projectile that always returns."
"Or leave it somewhere as a trap and summon it through an enemy," Vivi added darkly.
The implications hung in the air. Tadano's Cursed Arts had evolved from passive defense to active offense. The unbreakable blade that could appear in his hand from anywhere, at any time.
"You're becoming terrifying," Dan said, but he was smiling. "In the best possible way."
"We all are," Tadano replied. He looked at the blood on his hands, at the weapons they'd stolen, at the facility that had become their base of operations. "We're not kids playing at revolution anymore. We're soldiers. Killers."
"Revolutionaries," Dan corrected. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes. We kill because we have to, not because we want to. We kill soldiers, not civilians. We kill those who enforce oppression, not those who suffer under it." Dan's green eyes were serious. "That difference matters. That's what makes us different from the Darks."
Tadano wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe that the lives they'd taken today were justified, necessary, part of a greater purpose.
But he'd seen their faces. Seen the fear. Seen them die.
And he knew those images would stay with him forever.
"Come on," Vivi said, breaking the heavy silence. "Let's catalog the cargo. Figure out what we stole."
They spent the afternoon sorting through their haul. Weapons—enough to arm a small squad. Armor—Dark military grade, better than anything they currently had. Tech components Dan could use or sell. Medical supplies. Food rations.
It was a good haul. A successful mission.
Built on six corpses.
That night, Tadano lay in his bed, sword within arm's reach as always. He could feel it there—the Cursed Arts connection humming between them. Could summon it to his hand with a thought.
He'd killed three people today with that blade.
And tomorrow, if necessary, he'd kill three more.
Because this was war. This was revolution. This was the price of fighting back against an empire that had ruled for three thousand years.
The Shadow Blade. The Inferno Witch. The Tech Phantom.
Three teenagers with impossible powers and blood on their hands.
Three revolutionaries who'd just proven they could win.
But at what cost?
Tadano closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but all he saw were faces. All he smelled was blood and burned flesh.
The cost of revolution.
The price of freedom.