Rikunai: Genesis

Chapter Five: Assault

It was an hour before sunrise as twilight covered the forest in a cold chill, reminding the attacking party of twenty-three Li-Nin that it was November. Tiomoyo carefully hid behind a tree as he used his pocket mirror to get a view of the base. He created a circle in the air with his finger as Kiki nodded. Tiomoyo pointed to sections of the circle to illustrate where the guards were. Kiki relayed the information to the party behind her as she nodded to them.

"Ready?" Tiomoyo whispered.

Kiki nodded again and clenched her dull sword tight. This was it. The ground shook and leaves blasted away as Kiki rocketed out of the forest, precisely blowing away a piece of the base with a violent blast of Psychic-form, the white fireball barreling through the Earth-form walls.

Tiomoyo planted his feet as he motioned for everyone to stay back. He was going to blow away the trees to allow for the team to create Earth-form barriers to advance from, as the forest was simply too dense for any reasonable unified attack to be carried out.

Focus...

Tiomoyo's hands swirled with the gray tempest of Wind-form as he charged as much of the specialized Reiki to his hands as he could. He yelled as he released the mass, expecting it to snap the dozens of trees in half and leave only stumps, allowing his team to advance.

It did not, in fact, do this. The mass flew out and dissipated instantly, as Tiomoyo simply didn't have good enough control of the Reiki after it left his body to keep the devastating attack concentrated to a point of effectiveness. All that was done was blowing the autumn leaves off of their branches, leaving Tiomoyo absolutely devastated as Amy sped next to him using Lightning-form.

"Oh, great, a glorified air dryer is our leader." Amy snickered as she planted her palms on the ground as her aura clouded with gray and yellow. "Leaders are supposed to be strong." Her electric irises lit up as her black and yellow hair flew to the wind. She forced Lightning-form into the ground as the trees exploded in front of them, leaving burning splinters of wood to fall across the battlefield.

Amy looked at Tiomoyo and paused as she saw the devastated look on his face. For a moment, she felt bad for him, like she genuinely cared about the man she was so obsessed with tormenting. She ignored this feeling of remorse and sped behind the freshly created Earth-form shields, accelerating the projectiles the others were throwing with her mastery of Lightning-form.

Tiomoyo stood in defeat as his legs shook. He was humiliated. Niwiki rushed up behind him and smacked him on the back, literally forcing Tiomoyo out of his frozen state.

"Tiomoyo, we have to go, now!" Niwiki dragged him by the arm as he pulled them behind an Earth-form barrier. No one could move any closer, and Kiki couldn't get in because of the sheer number of people defending the base. She landed next to Tiomoyo and caught her breath.

"There's too many of them, even for me. I thought they already sent out their assault party, but this means there is only one, two, maybe three people with them."

"Who was in the assault party?" Tiomoyo asked as he clenched his sword.

"Gyra and a few others, but I thought I saw more. I guess I should've expected this, but... This is bad, vice."

"I'm not your second-in-command," Tiomoyo said as his eyes fell to the floor. A massive hurtling rock of Earth-form passed between the barriers and exploded behind the three of them as Tiomoyo shook his head. "I'm under your command, don't expect me to do this."

Kiki paused as she realized something was wrong. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not fit to be your equal. Not by a long shot. You're the strongest in our class, I couldn't even take down a couple of trees at my maximum concentration, but you destroyed part of an entire building with zero effort. We're not the same."