Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo, Bonus Epilogue Chapters

Although the epic battle between Toroka and Mecha-Tsuyo has ended, the war rages on. With so many characters on so many fronts, it is hard to let them all go. These two additional chapters will be included in the print and ebook editions of the novel, set during the story’s epilogue.

The first bonus chapter follows those once-dedicated members of the Black Dragon Society who were manipulated into sacrificing in vain to further someone else’s plot. The second brings the dreaded Steel Sergeant to Fast Freddie, in search of the Zero Hunter and his squadron, the only living witnesses to her bureau’s conspiracy. Unfortunately, she is not the only one looking for them…

These chapters contain spoilers for every part of Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo. Please be sure you’re caught up before reading.

Content warnings: violence, gore, animal violence, death, alcohol use, tobacco use, minor swearing, creeps, human trafficking.

The Hero’s Father.

THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 5, 1943
EMBER PEAK TEA GARDEN, MARUNOUCHI
TOKYO, JAPAN

//Translated from Japanese.//

Eigami Aoi waited quietly, trying his best to sip his whiskey from a trembling tumbler. He leaned over the rail, the rooftop garden to his back, gazing across the sparkling moat into the Imperial Palace's grounds.

“You can see everything from from here,” another man said behind him. Eigami stood and steadied his hands. The other man was younger than him, but his black Western-style suit could have come from the same tailor. Eigami recognized the logo adorning his tie pin.

“You must be Gushiken Yutaka,” he said, bowing gently. The younger man returned his bow. He was slightly taller, and slender. He looked softer than a man whose family got rich off steel should have been. His shoes were silenced by the garden's grass and further muffled by the trickling fountain behind him. The bartender waited under paper lanterns and hanging ferns, attentive but careful not to stare.

“I am honored you know me, Mister Eigami. My brother mentioned you many times,” Gushiken said. “You were instrumental in establishing many of our operations in Manchukuo.”

“I did my duty,” Eigami replied. He was at once a diplomat, a strongman, and a prospector. When the fighting was done, or at least suspended, the Emperor, or likely the Black Dragons, would summon him. He would find the deals to be made, the men to bribe, the places worth exploiting, and he would hollow them out. Friends of his patrons would gorge themselves and leave nothing but bones.

Just like in Manchukuo.

“I understand Kaede did his duty,” Gushiken said. “I am sorry for your loss.”

“Did you know him?” Eigami asked. Gushiken might have been near Kaede's age.

“He went to school with my cousins,” he replied. “I met him once, many years ago, at a lake house in the summer.”

Eigami smiled even as the dagger lodged in his heart twisted. Kaede had loved the trips his class would take to the mountains. Before he had joined the Black Dragon Society, he had hoped to become a game warden. Instead, he was put to death.

For nothing.

“Some say death was his duty,” Eigami said. He stared out again at the castle, so close he might touch it. “It looks so small.”

“It is small. It is only a building,” Gushiken said, as if the Divine Sovereign did not live under its roof. He left the rail and strolled a slow loop around the immaculate garden. The place was a wonder, like a different world from the streets a dozen floors below. Its design and craftsmanship rivaled the imperial gardens.

And it had been built by men, envisioned for men. It needed no mythology or devotion behind it. It simply was because it had chosen to be.

Gushiken cleared his throat, interrupting Eigami's musings.

“You said 'some' considered Kaede's death his duty. Do you disagree?” He was careful, probing, as if he had more to say if only Eigami could provide the right response.

Kaede was dead. He did not feel like games.

“How is your brother?” he asked. Gushiken stiffened.

“Takuma died three weeks ago,” he said. “But I expect you knew that. His 'duty.'”

“I was sorry to hear that. The Emperor asks much of us,” Eigami ventured.

“Not the Emperor,” Gushiken said. “Not of your son, or of my brother.”

“Another pulls the strings,” Eigami whispered and Gushiken nodded, as if drawing the next words from Eigami's mouth: “The Black Dragons.”

“Is that why you summoned me here?” Gushiken demanded, eyes narrowed. Eigami stepped back, nearly spilling his drink.

“I did not invite you,” he snapped. “The letter - !”

“Was from us,” a woman interrupted. Both men found a smiling, heavyset woman standing beneath the garden's gilded torii. She was wearing a Western dress in a blue so dark that it drank moonlight. Her hair was done in tight curls, and though Eigami was no expert when it came to jewelry, she was clearly wearing a fortune in gold and diamonds in her ears and around her neck.

A group of men followed her into the garden, stoic and silent in matching suits and ties, each carrying a short-barreled machine pistol. They took up positions encircling Eigami and Gushiken, blocking every exit.

The bartender seemed neither surprised nor concerned as she placed a freshly made martini on the bar. The strange woman plucked it off the marble without slowing.

“Gentlemen, my name is Chibane Naoko,” she said. She inclined her head, as close to a bow as she was willing to offer. “Do you know my name?”

Eigami did not and was startled when Gushiken answered:

“I know Chibane the Cleaver.”

“I called him Junpei. He was my late husband,” she replied. She took a wistful sip of her martini, raised the glass to the bartender in approval, then took a healthier swig. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“He was executed,” Gushiken replied.

“Yes, one whispered word in the Divine Idiot's ear and the Headsman did his deed,” she said, waving dismissively at the palace. “They issued a decree and took my husband's head for jealousy and greed.”

She lifted her glass and pointed to a well-lit square in the center of the imperial compound.

“That is where they did it, you know. They cut Junpei's head off right there.”

Eigami looked to Gushiken for confirmation. The younger man nodded, then discretely tapped his wrist and pointed at Chibane's men. Eigami saw colorful designs etched into the newcomers' skin peeking out from beneath their sleeves.

Only yakuza gangsters wore such extensive tattoos. Eigami recoiled: he knew of their ilk. They were killers and criminals. Sill, it was odd to hear of one executed: the yakuza were deeply entrenched in the fabric of Tokyo and to pull one thread might set the whole thing to unraveling. They were best humored or ignored.

Until they could not be.

“Madame Chibane,” Eigami said, clearing his throat, his eyes lingering on the gangsters' hooded prisoners, “Why have you asked us here?”

“Did you read my letter, Mister Eigami?” she asked. She leaned on the rail and stared out over the city. Her men spread out around her, lounging but close. The prisoners stood, frozen in place. Each yakuza man ordered a drink and tipped graciously, but none of them indulged. The odd pair did not make any effort to pretend they were at the garden for any reason other than to be at Chibane's beck and call.

“You wrote that you have answers regarding my son's death,” Eigami replied. Little else could have made him leave his home or his wife's side.

“And for my brother's,” Gushiken added.

“I confess, I have no answers beyond what you already know,” Chibane replied. “Your son was convinced to sacrifice himself for Takamoto Haruto's vanity. And your brother was tricked and cajoled into signing his own death warrant as a pawn in the Tetsujin's power games.”

Eigami and Gushiken looked at each other. The strange woman had called the Emperor an 'idiot' and knew the name of the Black Dragons' highest authority. Neither knew how to react.

“You are not my only guests, however,” she said. “Ryu! Mister Tsume! Bring your friends.”

The yakuza guarding the torii parted and allowed two pairs of men through. The first set was made up of one treacherously thin man in all black shoving a hooded prisoner wearing Imperial Army fatigues. The thin man had sallow, sunken features and dark hair tied back in a bun. His clothes were dark and plain, as if crafted to be forgotten, save for the thick leather glove on his right hand.

The widest man Eigami had ever seen lumbered in next. He was shaved bald and not fat, but broad. He wore a scowl and a cloak thrown over his massive shoulders. His back looked like he was carrying a full marching pack underneath his clothes. He led his own hooded prisoner, this one stout, dragging a charred white robe.

“Sato Ryu, if you would,” Chibane said. The broad man stepped back and the thin man stepped forward. He ripped the hood off his prisoner's head and released the bindings on his wrists.

The man was middle-aged with a thin mustache and close-cropped hair. He rubbed his wrists and glared at Sato. His insignia marked him an officer. He took in the scene around him: the serene garden, the city skyline, the bar, the armed yakuza. His eyes settled on Sato Ryu and widened with recognition.

“Traitor,” he snarled, “Coward.”

Sato made no comment. Instead, he lowered himself into an attack stance. The officer met him in kind, bringing his hands up.

“Ryu is a Black Dragon as well, you see,” Chibane said from her place at the bar. “Or he was. After that mess in Sapporo, he knew that the Dragons would only get him killed. So he came to us. Now he's made the Headsman's ledger. What did the Ax Hand call you, Ryu?”

“Gaikotsu,” he snarled. He squared off with Iwai. The officer looked ready to tear out his throat with his teeth.

“You knew the Ax Hand?” Eigami snarled.

“Gaikotsu flew for him. Takamoto was the only dog willing to take on your fleas after you were expelled from the ninja, wasn't he?” Chibane asked. She laughed and pushed her dangling hair back out of her face. “What does that make me, I wonder?”

“You were there!” Eigami shouted. Gushiken held him back from the brewing fight.

“Ryu could have no more stood up to the Ax Hand than he could to the sun,” Chibane said. “He was a witness to Kaede's death, nothing more.”

“What is this?” Eigami demanded.

“The edge of the world,” Chibane whispered. She sipped her martini then spoke up: “Show us, Ryu.”

Sato nodded, then charged. The officer wove between his blows, a mongoose to his viper. The men whirled around each other, their kicks and punches seeming to thunder the air around them.

“Amazing,” Gushiken whispered. His jaw was hanging open. He was clearly more studied in martial arts than Eigami.

Both combatants held their own, going to blow-for-blow, contact-for-contact. Blue spattered the emerald grass and spattered into the fountain. They worked their way around each other, circling, each strike more brutal and desperate.

“We have a full agenda, Ryu,” Chibane said, feigning a yawn.

Sato nodded and pulled a spool of thread from his belt. The officer saw it and tried to run but the yakuza men shoved him back to the center of the garden.

“What?” Eigami asked.

Even as he spoke, Sato whirled the near-invisible strands through the air. The officer froze in place and Sato yanked backward. The threads tightened, spider-like, pressing into the man's face and clothes.

“Step off the edge,” Chibane whispered.

Sato wrapped the thread around his gloved hand and hauled back. Blood sprouted where the strands extended over the officer's skin. The officer tried to shout but a vicious final pull cut the scream to a single syllable. Red misted the lilies and the man came apart.

Eigami spun away doubled over the rail, spewing whiskey into the open air.

It took him a few minutes to return to his senses and when he did only blood remained where there had been a pile of twitching body parts.

“What was... who...” he stammered.

“That was Colonel Iwai Daigo,” she said. “He was a Black Dragon. A jitte, I believe. The same rank they bestowed on Kaede in exchange for his life. I thought you would enjoy seeing him die.”

“He's not who forced my son into that plane,” Eigami said.

“No, he was not. But Daigo profited from Kaede's death. He received great rank and reward to house the creature's remains. He was given command of a facility in Hiroshima to house Toroka's corpse. What was it called?”

“The Thunder Cave,” Sato said from the other side of the fountain. He was lounging, smoking a cigarette. His voice rattled, as if he had not spoken in weeks.

“The Thunder Cave, yes. Thank you, Ryu.” Chibane tipped her martini back, finishing it in a gulp. She heel-toed through the bloody grass and set her glass on the bar. “A double, please.”

The bartender crafted the cocktail without comment. Chibane took it and nearly drained it on her first sip. Her face flushed red and beads of sweat blossomed along her hairline.

“You see, Aoi, the Dragons are united,” she said as she sashayed back to the roof's edge. “They turned a political movement into a cult. One Dragon is all Dragons. You are one, and Yukata, Daigo, and Ryu. All are required to give everything without question. Unless you are the Tetsujin or his chosen. His family, his friends, are beyond that expectation. Daigo was one of the chosen. The grandson of the Tetsujin's childhood sensei.”

“And you have had him killed,” Eigami said carefully.

“Ryu killed him, an unforgivable offense in your Society. He has leapt off the edge and has nowhere to land except for with me. I would be executed for asking it of him, probably without the pomp they afforded my husband.”

Eigami knew that was true. His oath to the Dragons obligated him to either kill her or face death himself.

But that oath was a sham. His son's death proved that. Kaede was not a brother to the Dragons, he was a tool, a distraction.

Eigami had sought to build a future for his nation, but everything he had done in the last decade had been to advance the Tetsujin's interests and dominance alone. His sweat, his money, and his son had been shed for them and they did not care. They'd kill Kaede again if they could. They'd kill a thousand Kaedes to still lose a battle and a city.

“The Black Dragons have slithered their way around the Empire's throat, squeezing gently,” Chibane continued, “After a while, you no longer notice the noose. Not until it tightens around someone you love.”

“And how does one get out of the noose?” Eigami snapped.

“If you try to struggle it slips tighter,” Chibane answered. “Instead, it must be cut.”

Gushiken chuckled at that one, gleeless and morbid.

“The Tetsujin commands a personal army and the ear of the Emperor. He has a legion of ninja at his disposal, and wields the Imperial Army and Navy as if they were his own. He has weapons and resources beyond what we could comprehend,” Chibane listed. “But the Dragons are young. We were shaping the course of history long before they crawled out of wherever they came from.”

“'We?'” Eigami asked.

“We, the Gen'yōsha,” Chibane said.

“The Dark Ocean Society?” Gushiken spat. “You have killed us both with this stunt. Backwater politicians cannot stand against the Dragons.”

“We have members in the government now, yes, but the Dark Ocean Society was formed in the gutters. Many of us remember how to affect change in the old ways,” Chibane said with a smile. “We have our own means, beyond and below where the Tetsujin chooses to look. We see his intent with the Emperor and seek to remove the serpent from our nation.”

Eigami felt his hand trembling once more. The Gen'yōsha was an old sect. They were killers and terrorists recruited from the worst the yakuza had to offer. Their atrocities divided the nation but brought about the change they desired: the drive for the Japanese conquest of East Asia. By the time the Black Dragons splintered away, the Dark Ocean Society was synonymous with horror and death. The Dragons maintained their goals but abandoned their brutality. They became the tolerable alternative.

In the thirty years since the schism, the Dragons had wormed their way into the Empire's core while the Dark Ocean had grown shallow, powerless. They only existed as crackpots and out-of-touch politicians from the forgotten corners of the home islands. They had withered to irrelevance.

Or so he had thought.

“A hawk with skill hides its claws,” Chibane said. She sipped her martini, then said: “The true depths of the Dark Ocean remain secret, gentlemen.”

“So why reveal yourselves to us?” Gushiken asked.

“Because you are men of character, resources, and patriotism, and the serpents who claim all those virtues have taken from you that which cannot be replaced. Kaede, Takuma, Junpei. I wish you to help us,” she answered.

“With what?” Eigami asked.

“Setting our nation back on its correct path,” she replied. “The Dragons once wanted the same things we do. But they excoriated my predecessors for their means. They made themselves the reasonable party and pedaled our ideas while glad-handing with the cowards in power. They gained influence while we were ostracized. Our goals were forgotten and the Dragons grew fat and greedy. They only seek money and to retain their power. Our goals, our destiny, was forgotten in their corruption.”

“And what destiny is that?” Eigami wondered. He was throwing off the shackles he had worn for a decade and the last thing he wanted was fresh chains forged from grandiose lies and schemes.

“We wish to fight a war for the future of this nation,” Chibane answered. “We wish to eliminate the Black Dragons.”

Something swelled in Eigami's chest. Purpose. The Dragons were destroying his homeland from within. He had a chance to stop that. Gushiken interrupted his thoughts with an objection:

“You want a war against the Dragons? They can make battleships walk, they kill in the shadows, they can starve an entire island on a whim.”

“They are not the only ones with weapons,” Chibane said. “I have someone for you as well, Yukata. Mister Tsume!”

The broad man smiled and stepped into the middle of the garden. His bald head gleamed under the latern light. Eigami could see thin, parallel scars running across Mister Tsume's face and scalp.

“Who is your friend?” Chibane asked him.

“I call him 'Neko,'” Mister Tsume said, his country accent thick. “He won't talk. None of the Smiths ever talk. But look at him!”

Mister Tsume slipped the hood off Neko's head, revealing an old man with wild hair and a thick gray beard singed short. His flat face and scruffy facial hair combined with his large wet eyes made him look like a grumpy, squish-faced cat.

“See? 'Neko' it is.”

“He is an Imperial Swordsmith?” Gushiken asked, incredulous.

“Look at this,” Mister Tsume offered, then yanked Neko over and pulled his collar down. The old man had ancient scars and callouses around his neck where some device and rubbed the same spots for years. “That's from his Vow. This asshole was set to chop his own damn head off instead of having one little conversation.”

“They don't get captured alive,” Gushiken said. He looked to Chibane for confirmation. She was leaning against the bar where a fresh martini had appeared by her elbow.

“What can I say? I'm fast,” Mister Tsume replied with a shrug accentuated by his freakish shoulders. “Probably fast enough to save your brother.”

Chibane interrupted before Gushiken could react:

“You say the Black Dragons have weapons? Monsters? Their weapons are new. We've been building ours for years.”

“I have served the Dark Ocean since I was a child,” Mister Tsume said. He threw his cloak off his shoulders then crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“What is...” Gushiken stared, but he was silenced by the rattling pop of joints.

Mister Tsume arched his spine and twisted his neck. Eigami gasped as two long arms unfolded behind him, a second set sprouting from his back. Both aliens arms rippled with muscle beneath their layer of wiry orange fur. Each arm terminated in a massive paw and when Mister Tsume stretched them all the way out Eigami glimpsed wicked claws extend and retract, razor-sharp and curved like sickles.

“The Tetsujin has scientists,” Chibane explained, “We have artists.”

Eigami backed away until he bumped into the rail. The Tokyo street waited hungry sixteen floors below.

Mister Tsume had the front legs of a full-grown tiger growing from his back like angel wings.

“I'm not going to give some show like the ninja did,” he said. “I am the show.”

Neko was frozen where he stood. Mister Tsume reached out with one of his massive paws and palmed the smith's head. His fur tensed and bristled, then all four stiletto-sized claws shot out as if on pistons, punching through Neko's skull with a crunch. His eyes rolled back and he went limp, dangling by his scalp.

Mister Tsume grunted and held him aloft for another few seconds, then retracted his claws. The corpse crumpled to the grass.

“Who was he?” Gushiken asked.

“An Imperial Swordsmith,” Chibane spat. She waved her emptied glass in front of her. “Those assholes don't speak, so I don't know if he was in on it or what, but he let your brother die. He was fine with it.”

“You do not even know if he was there...”

“He supported those that were,” Chibane snapped. Sweat had begun trickling down her face and her curls were swinging in sodden clumps. “What you don't see is that our enemies are united against us. They all have to go! The Dragons are upstarts with the idiot's ear. We know how to do things. We've been killing for sixty years.”

She pushed herself off the bar and staggered toward Gushiken, past Mister Tsume. Her toe caught Neko's foot and she stumbled, but Mister Tsume caught her with one large soft paw and steadied her. She shoved it away and lurched past Gushiken to stare at the Imperial Palace.

“When we're done, that place will burn,” she snarled. She turned to look at her guests, her eyes bleary and unfocused, then pointed at Neko's corpse. “That blood right there, that binds us. For seeing what we've seen, you and me, gentlemen, are over that edge. We can't go back. If you want to live, for your families to live, we have to win. We have to set this nation back to where it is supposed to be, we have to save it. And when we're done, we're going to do it to the rest of them.”

She swung her glass around, as if showing them the dark horizon, then threw it over her shoulder. A few seconds later it shattered in the street.

Chibane chuckled, shoving her hair out of her face.

“The Dragons want power because they're addicted to it. When we take it, we'll use it. We'll kill them all, cut out the cancer.”

Eigami was nodding along with Sato and Mister Tsume. The Dragons were a cancer, they all knew it. The blood bound them. He was Dark Ocean, and the Dark Ocean would be his purpose.

“The Dragons forgot what we do,” Chibane ranted. Alcohol wafted off her breath, astringent even on the open rooftop. She steadied herself on the rail and yelled out at the distant place: “We will take it back. We'll carry that burden, that necessity, that greatness, and when they're all rotting, we go to China, Korea, anywhere we want. Russia! America! We're going to burn them all. The Nazis will help, they have the will. The mutts and mongrels will die, and we will remain. Victory is our destiny. We will return Japan to glory.”

The Steel Sergeant.

TUESDAY NIGHT, AUGUST 4, 1943
F.A.S. BASE “FREDDIE”
BDENIE ISLAND

//Translated from Russian.//

Shattered tarmac crunched beneath Valeriya Vinogradova’s armored soles. The officials had destroyed everything before they left, down to their very runway. She could not blame them: they had been at Sapporo, they had seen the Gryazevoy Krab. It was hard to forget a wonder.

They must have known knew she would have to try her best to adjust their memories. Or at least contain them.

In many ways, a gulag was safer than the war.

“Anything?” she rumbled, her armor amplifying her bray to carry it across the desolate island. With the overcasters scrapped, Bdenie seemed little more than a pile of rocks with a runway carved down the middle.

She had already finished with the bunkhouse and briefing room. The members of Forward Attack Squadron F had cleared or burned it all. Not a scrap of paper or food remained. One of them had even glued pushpins to every chair seat.

One of her soldiers shuffled over, manacles clanking, a glittering array of loose wires and warped metal shards in hand.

“Radio detonator,” he said.

She grunted in the affirmative and he shuffled off.

They had blown it up as they’d flown away.

Anything they couldn’t load up they had burned and the avgas haze clung to the island. The column of black smoke was two kilometers tall, a mingling of their smoldering armory, fuel depot, and waste pile. It was only a matter of time before the Japanese sent someone to investigate, and she wanted to be gone.

She also needed to be sure. Her men were still looking, but she did not expect any results. Their planes were gone, all three of them. They were out there, along with whatever film they had taken of the Krab. The contraption was never intended to be seen, and they had seen it.

“Westerners,” she muttered. They either had not trusted her or they’d thought her stupid. The I-A bomb she’d provided felled the monster, but it would have disabled their planes in the air. Vinogradova had omitted the need to shield their planes for a reason. They were supposed to die. If they had, they would have died heroes. The slayers of the beast.

Taking that footage back to their leaders would start something she did not wish to finish.

Vinogradova had seen the horrors of Leningrad, Stalingrad, the Nazis’ camps, the purges. She wanted to fight and end the Axis, but allowing evidence of the Krab to reach Bombay would mean conflict within the Office.

It would mean she would have to talk. Major General Ryazonova thought it funny to send her trained bear to solve diplomatic and logistical problems. Vinogradova hated talking and scheming. Her strength was through her armor and concentrated in the head of her sledgehammer.

She paced up the ruined runway, kicking rubble out of her way. Her boot clanged against a Jeep’s twisted hood, the painted woman lounging across it half-charred and bent to an impossible angle. She punted the scrap, sending it clanging against the collapsed hangar.

Thin men peaked out of the rubble like weasels, scanning for danger.

“Keep looking!” Vinogradova bellowed.

She kicked another chunk of broken tarmac, sending it tumbling down the runway.

She missed Efram. She had never meant to, but she did. He wouldn’t miss her, of that she was sure. When the commissariat had assigned him to marry her, he had done his duty. He had said the vows, posed for the photos, done the interviews. They had demanded a child of them, a little patriot. Efram had performed that duty as well.

She had not mentioned her condition to Ryazonova yet, or anyone, but among her team it was known. When her engineers had to consistently adjust the spacers around her midsection, they knew. She knew that the instant she took her armor off for longer than a night she would never get it back. She would be a heroic mother, providing the next generation of Soviet citizens and someone else would wear her red.

Without her, the Steel Sergeant would become a shell, the person within interchangeable. They’d already made her a symbol, but it was the armor they truly wanted. Vinogradova would not lose her name again. And she would not let someone take it.

Not even for her child.

She had to fight, had to prove her worth. She had to succeed.

“Find something!” she roared. Her voice boomed. Manacled men scrambled between the rocks. The commisariat had demanded she find the Zero Hunter’s gun camera footage. One did not disappoint the commissariat and keep their name.

“Search, you lazy rats!” Vinogradova shouted.

She could hear her tattooed, ragged contingent flipping the barracks. Desks and drawers clattered across the floor. She sighed. The only film or paper left was burning.

The Fast Attack Squadron had not trusted her and they had survived for it. They were long gone, to China or India, perhaps even Australia. Where they and their story went next, she could not guess. It remained to be seen whether they would survive what came next.

Ryazonova had kept a secret from the Westerners. Their alliance was tenuous at best, and all the whispers said that once the Nazis were gone the U.S. would attack Moscow next. The Krab was a weapon that could change war and once the rest of the Office saw it, they would change the war around it.

“Fyodor!” one of her men shouted from near the closest hangar. Vinogradova pushed her musings aside and stomped down the runway. Her armor hissed with every step.

She found Avdey behind the barracks sobbing and manacled, kneeling over a corpse. Red pooled beneath Fyodor’s body, though just as much had been splashed up the barracks’ concrete wall.

“Was this you?” she growled. The way Avdey looked up at her nearly made her forget he was already a murderer. He had butchered two police officers behind a Moscow shoe store over a leather jacket. Killing Fyodor would be nothing to him.

Her gauntlet hissed and groaned where she squeezed the neck of her worn, infamous sledgehammer. They were too close to Japan for foolishness. Avdey’s mouth continued moving in silence.

“Speak up!” she roared.

“No!” Avedey spat. “No, I would never!”

“Not never,” Vinogradova snarled.

“I didn’t do this,” Avdey muttered. Tears were streaming down his face. In that moment, he did not look like a killer. Vinogradova snorted then stepped past him to examine the body. She flipped Fyodor onto his back with her boot. He was sliced open to the spine, from his right hip to the bottom of his left ear. Avdey gasped.

“No, you did not,” Vinogradova agreed. They were not the only ones who wanted to know where the Westerners had gone. She knew who inflicted wounds like Fyodor’s: “Ninja.”

She turned the volume up on her helmet’s built-in bullhorn and shouted loud enough to blanket the entire island:

“Back to the ship, now!” Even as her echoes careened around Bdenie, a blast erupted as if answering her call. Smoke rose from the western shore. It would be visible for kilometers in every direction.

“Gather on me!” she ordered. Eight men scrambled out of the rubble and knotted into a small circle behind her.

Vinogradova had arrived with fourteen.

“Where is everyone?”

The men her bureau had plucked from the gulags had mastered the art of looking clueless long before they’d worn her chains.

“Follow me,” she grunted.

They ran west, eight men trailing an earthquake. The island was riddled with rocks the size of horses. The runway her bureau had blasted flat was truly the only open space on it. Vinogradova powered through and her men struggled to keep pace. The gunmetal in her pack rattled with each step.

She found their boat burning off the rocky shore. Two men were laid out on the waterline, bound and engulfed in flames.

She slung her pack around, ripped it open, and removed a pistol. The sight of it silenced her jabbering followers.

“Take it! Now!” she shouted at Avdey.

“What?” he stammered. She grunted and threw it at him. He caught it and checked its bolt, confident and comfortable with a weapon in hand.

It wasn’t much of a gun. Criminals knew it as an Obrez, little more than a Mosin-Nagant sawed down to its trigger and receiver. It was slow to fire, inaccurate, and held just five rounds. It was the perfect last-ditch weapon to give to a gang of criminals that were as likely to shoot her in the back as they were to shoot their enemies.

Vinogradova counted out seven more makeshift pistols and handed one to each man. Flames rose off the boat behind her. She was left holding a single Obrez.

She counted her terrified men twice more before she realized that they no longer numbered eight. Somewhere between the airstrip and the beach, she had lost another.

“We are not alone on this island,” she snarled. Her voice rumbled like an old truck engine.

“The Americans?” a bearded vor asked, the mangled gun rattling in his hands.

“Americans do not kill quietly,” she said.

“Then who - !” he started, then gurgled and fell. A shape dashed between boulders. She lifted the last Obrez and pulled the trigger but the shadow was gone. Her men scrambled and opened fire at nothing.

“Cease fire!” Vinogradova roared but they had already wasted half their ammunition in a blind barrage. “Idiots.”

The bearded vor was lying face down, a massive blade buried deep in his back. Vinogradova reached for it, a wide golden cleaver polished so brightly that it reflected like a mirror. Before she could touch it, it whipped out of the man’s back and disappeared between the stones, retracting on an invisible thread.

It was no ninja weapon. Who it belonged to, she was not sure. She left the body where it lay. Flames gilded the sloshing tide.

“Tighten up!” she ordered. Her men shrank toward her.

“We are trapped here,” Avdey babbled.

“The enemy plans on leaving,” Vinogradova snarled.

“Is it ninja?” Avdey wondered. The men of her bureau were not offered much, but they had access to hundreds of intelligence briefings. The Kuragarigirudo occupied dozens of those briefings. He should have known the signs rather than succumb to blind fear.

“If you opened your eyes…” she started only for Avdey’s head to thump to the ground and roll to her feet. He stared up at her, gaunt and silent.

Her men, only hers because they were so used to violence, cowered. Red blossomed as Avdey’s body slumped over.

The young man standing before them was dressed in a shimmering golden kimono, bright and gleaming as the gold cleaver clutched in his hand. His blade was so sharp that blood simply slithered off its edge. Vinogradova could see her masked face in its reflection.

“Ninja?” one of her men gasped.

“Ninja?” the stranger wondered with a little chuckle. He was young, which made his smirk all the more annoying. He was spotless despite his blood-letting, without a single hair of his tight top knot out of place. “Ninja, īe.”

“Steady…” Vinogradova hissed. Before her manacled men could react, the stranger dropped his cleaver and whipped it around by its thread. The golden blade flashed and three more throats yawned open.

Before she could react, the cleaver clanged against her helmet hard enough to stagger her. Only half of her shock was from the impact. She had been struck head-on by a Kubelwagen before and had felt less of a hit.

The stranger squirmed around the surviving men’s shots, swinging his cleaver and disassembling them like he was preparing chicken for the pot. Her last two men fell to pieces.

Vinogradova caught herself and charged. She swung her hammer with every bit of hydraulic force she could muster. The stranger was skilled, she would have to kill him in a single hit. He would not offer her a second chance.

He slithered away, backpedalling so that her blows fell short by centimeters. With her every miss his grin widened.

“Stay. Still.”

She swung wide then released with one hand, letting her hammer slide down out of her grip until she clamped vice-like on the knob at the very end of its handle.

The stranger yelped and dropped to the ground, the hammer coming closer than he’d intended. If he had been a flutter slower she would have spread him across the rocks like spilled paint. He scrambled backward and when he stood he was no longer grinning.

She stepped forward, her armor groaning and churning around her. He slithered back, keeping their distance, then held up a hand to stop her. She obliged, she had nowhere to be and no way to get there.

He sheathed his cleaver and rifled through his loose robe, emerging with an ornate scroll. He unrolled it and held it out so she could see what was written.

She could not read Japanese but she knew the Emperor’s chrysanthemum seal when she saw it. And the sketch of Hercules Chen’s face next to it was impossibly accurate, down to his frustrated little sneer.

The stranger untied a small fabric bag from his belt, also emblazoned with the Imperial Seal. It was just large enough to hold a grown man’s head. She knew what she was seeing. The stranger was one of Tojo’s personal executioners. Too young to be the Imperial Headsman himself, but one of his apprentices.

His English was nearly as bad as hers:

“Zero Hunter.”

Chen was long gone, otherwise Vinogradova would have already taken him herself. She shrugged, a creaking motion that sounded like a car wreck.

The apprentice shrugged back, rolled up his scroll, and tucked it away. He held onto the head bag and unsheathed his cleaver.

“Hagane Sājanto, tadashi?” he asked. His little grin went wide. “Suita fukuro wa mochikaeru koto wa dekimasen.”

The golden blade shot out at her, then arced up high and came down on her armored collarbone with guillotine force. She staggered back, again stunned by the impact. She lifted her sledgehammer to block the next blow, only for the apprentice to lashed out across her gauntlet. Her hand rang and went numb. Hydraulic fluid sprayed from ruptured lines and the hammer slipped out of her grasp. The apprentice hooked his toe under it and kicked it into the water, past her burning men.

His smile was wide as he danced away from her. A flick of the wrist sent his careening cleaver back into his hand.

“The first men I killed with this weapon were between my fingers,” Vinogradova growled. He cocked his head, still smiling. He knew as much Russian as she knew Japanese.

She charged him, piston-powered fists thrumming jackhammer-fast. Stil he backpedalled. He never ducked to the side or below; he always wanted her to see his face, to know he was faster than her, that he wasn’t afraid.

He threw the cleaver out again, snapping its invisible thread like a bullwhip. Each strike battered her down until she was crouched low, doing her best to covered her head and neck from the barrage. She felt like a building was collapsing on top of her.

Vinogradova curled in like a turtle. The Steel Sergeant had bested Panzers, matagi, Vampir snipers, entire Nazi companies. She had won battles on her own and lifted the hearts of an entire nation.

But the Steel Sergeant was propaganda, the armor was a tool. It was Vinogradova who had done all those things.

She was a legend and she would not be killed by an apprentice of anything.

The cleaver struck harder with each blow, lightning and tank shells on her neck and shoulders.

The Steel Sergeant’s head was worth something to the apprentice, but Vinogradova’s was not. Her’s was the head of a survivor. She curled in as tight as she could and hooked her fingers under the hinges connecting her right vambrace at the elbow. With a tug, she ripped them free, then tore through the pistons and actuators beneath. The gauntlet froze, disconnected and paralyzed. A red light flickered to life inside her helmet on the right side.

“Stop that!” she roared, then lunged forward like a pouncing tiger.

The apprentice glided backward, just out of her reach. She swung her left fist like a madwoman, each time finding nothing but air and that damned grin, centimeters out of her reach.

She stumbled and wheezed as dramatically as she could muster. She had never been a good actor, but it was enough for the preening apprentice.

He opened his mouth to say something that she was sure might anger her further, but she interrupted by lunging once more with her right arm drawn back. He took his measure of her again, stepping just far enough that a punch would not reach him.

When she launched her pneumatic haymaker, the gauntlet slid off her hand and flew with shattering force. The twenty kilos of case-hardened steel collided with the grinning apprentice.

His head snapped back with the impact and he collapsed, limp. The gauntlet stood up straight out of his skull, stuck up to its wrist in what had been his face.

Vinogradova coughed and dropped to a knee. The armor creaked and groaned around her. A cold gust came in off the ocean, prickling her bare skin. She looked down at her naked hand. She could not remember the last time she had been outside without the armor covering every centimeter of her.

She sighed and looked around. Her men were dead, her boat was burning, the Westerners were gone, and she was alone.

The apprentice had come from somewhere, and he would have to leave. It was no use taking a head if one did not intend to show it off. He either had a boat waiting or a ride coming. Whatever his means of getting off the island, she would find it and she would take it.

She lurched back to her feet and ambled to the dead executioner. Her gauntlet was buried too deep in his pulped skull to extract with her bare hand. She matched her armor’s groan as she clamped on and yanked it out with a squelch.

She took the apprentice’s scroll and left his corpse where it lay. Every step toward the ruined airstrip felt like a kilometer.

Where ever the Zero Hunter had run to, she hoped he was fighting.

The Imperial Headsman had enough trophies, and her bureau had enough prisoners. He was worth more out there, even if what he had seen turned the Westerners against her homeland. The Battle of Sapporo showed what he was willing to risk for others. If he couldn’t be her ally, he was the kind of enemy she’d prefer.

Besides, in her experience if the Germans, the Japanese, and the commissariat all wanted someone’s head at the same time, that someone must have been doing something right.

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Copyright © 2025 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.