Hachi gritted his teeth. A thin line of ivy crawling up the shed snagged him, and he kicked it off before concentrating.
He focused on the doors in the sakura garden and trained them to open into the orchard nearby. He didn't need help, but the newcomers needed a briefing. He wanted to know who had come along with Kumagai, as well.
Kotone whipped a thick tree root at him, and he had to push himself into a jump to flee. He tumbled to the ground in a heap, and he heard the rumble of stone cracking as the attack leveled the shed.
He grunted as he got to his feet and hissed as he forced his body to run. The door a few tree-rows down to his right opened, and Kumagai and another Doorkeeper stepped through.
Kotone didn't immediately notice; none of the trees arced to attack the Kumagai or her guest.
He risked staring at the stranger. Their uniform was quite tattered, yet they didn't seem injured. The wide-eyed look on their face was the biggest giveaway that he was some kind of rookie keeper.
That made him Kumagai's other charge, Hachi realized. He must've been with Kumagai to clear the door.
Hachi's brain worked, connecting dots and forming logical leaps.
If the rookie was with Kumagai and not Mochizuki, it meant he was a valuable support-focused keeper.
"Kumagai!" he shouted. He pointed to a door. "Your man is through there."
Kumagai startled as a massive barrage of foliage thundered toward him. He dove into a roll, dodging the main mass but cutting his side to ribbons on the little sticks and thorns on the outside.
The pain only made the adrenaline of Rampage easier to access, but he still waited to use it.
"Lend me that one, and I'll send him over to Nanae and Mochizuki later!"
Kumagai hesitated in her steps, but ran to the door, leaving the man behind. He hurried to run alongside Hachi, but out of the way of the rampaging attacks.
"Y-you're really wounded!" he shouted across the battlefield.
"What do you do?" Hachi asked.
Before the man could answer, a wall of writhing thorns surrounded Hachi. It happened desperately fast—so quickly that it destroyed the other vegetation around him. Hachi knew he had to get to the man.
He activated his ability again, sending his body into Rampage. It was starting to burn his body, even through the adrenaline pumping through his veins. The overclock was going to put him down this time. He needed to finish things soon.
He jumped over the thorn wall. He had to climb over the top as it reached up to catch him, but not quickly enough—the burst of speed was a temporary thing Kotone wasn't able to so quickly recreate.
The stranger looked at him with wide eyes as Hachi landed and sprinted toward him. He threw a hand out, and a door appeared. On such short notice, it would only put them in another part of the orchard, but it was better than nothing.
He slammed into the man, throwing them both through the door and slamming into an ancient persimmon. A ripe fruit splattered to the ground beneath them, then sprouted instantly and kept growing into a myriad of small trees, all intertwined with each other.
Hachi breathed heavily but raggedly. Rampage would stay alive as long as he could keep his adrenaline high.
"What do you do?"
The man had his hands out, practically holding Hachi up as his limbs shook with overuse. An orb of soft light appeared, and a soothing warmth cut through the pain. At first, it was welcome.
Hachi watched the wounds close up and the blood pull from his clothes, then he scowled when he realized that Rampage was being undone as his body returned to a calm state.
"Stop, stop," Hachi ordered.
The light stopped, and the man offered only a quizzical stare. "What's wrong?"
"Wait."
Hachi flexed his repaired fingers. The wounds were all gone. The exhaustion was all gone. He looked at the orchard, which was becoming more alive as Kotone searched for them.
"You rewind bodies. How many times can you do that?"
"I can do it as long as I have the energy."
"How much energy do you have?"
"I can do a few more longer rewinds, I think."
"Okay." Hachi pointed at the door they'd gone through. "When I give you a door, open it and rewind me, okay?"
"Wait, wait, what are you going to do?" the man asked.
"I use Rampage until I can't, then I recover from the overclock, right? You undo it all, and I go again. Understand? Rinse and repeat until you or Kotone dies. If you live, I send you to Nanae."
"Mochizuki-san—" he began, "—is she okay?"
"Where's your weapon?"
He fumbled, a door flashing briefly to summon a kunai rope dart on a chain—Hachi almost laughed; it was so perfect. He held it out in his hands to show Hachi, but Hachi grabbed it.
"I'm going to borrow it, okay? You'll know where I am, just ignore the bad feeling, okay? I'll keep it safe."
"Wha—"
Hachi took it, activated Rampage, and ran towards Kotone.
Free to push as hard as he could, he bounded over incoming attacks as Kotone realized where he was.
She was out of her shell and back on her throne. He cut around, hiding behind her recklessly wide attacks, and came up from behind.
With her web of flora, he couldn't hide completely from her, but he caught her off guard enough to throw the kunai as she formed a wall to block him.
He didn't bother scaling the wall; the kunai sailed through the growing thorn barrier, and he felt the thud of contact through the chain, as well as a confirming shout of pain.
He planted his feet and, with the remaining power Rampage could offer him, pulled her toward him in a harsh yank.
The thorn wall hurried to part, saving Kotone from her own attack, and vines snapped out to halt the pull, but Rampage wouldn't be stopped.
Kotone ripped through the barren remains of the thorns and arrived before Hachi. He had already wound back his rear arm in a hook. In a brief moment, he saw the kunai embedded just next to her stomach.
He moved forward to meet her, throwing the rest of Rampage into a lariat that sent her to the ground. The whites of her eyes showed, and he felt the whoof of air leave her lungs as he winded her.
She blinked, though, after a breath, and the thorn wall exploded. Sharp splinters flew everywhere, but thick roots came up to protect the Trapdoorer and squeeze around her kunai wound.
Hachi couldn't dodge or block in time not to be pelleted, but he could desperately use his last pre-overclock moments to summon a door and fall through it.
The overlock left him completely prone and bleeding out. Without the adrenaline, he could feel each splinter, easily the size of a steak knife, and each wound. His breath came in sharp pants as he failed to move even his fingertips, but the other Doorkeeper's weapon was still in his hands.
The door he'd fallen through opened again. He heard a form kneel beside him and a voice murmur gently, then the warm light of the healing ability.
The debilitating pain subsided, and he twitched back upright as his muscles finally responded.
"Is she dead yet?" he croaked.
The man looked somewhat horrified. "N-no."
Hachi struggled to push himself to his feet. Even with the healing, he was still feeling the mental fatigue from Rampage, and it was making his muscles spasm.
"No? Where is she?"
"She's down, she's down."
"She's out?"
The man helped him up and pointed. The orchard was writhing meekly. Hachi opened a door, and they stepped through to see Kotone in a low nest of roots. It looked like she was trying to reconstruct her platform, but failing.
She, too, was writhing, nose bubbling with blood as she struggled to breathe. She was dying, finally.
The stranger Doorkeeper tried to hurry to her side, but Hachi caught him by the jacket.
Hachi threw the kunai once more, snapping it to land just a few hairs from her head. She didn't react to it—she just kept struggling, eyes open but not alert.
"Okay," Hachi said, letting him go. "Heal her just enough to survive. Nothing more."
Akiko slid her boots silently along the lacquered wood of the halls. In place of the sliding screens a castle would've had, Sasaki's ramshackle doors lined the hall. She squeezed the handles of her knives, twisting the blades in thought.
The castle hall offered a maze of rooms and trick doors, spitting her and Noboru out at different points along the long hall, or lurking in a room off of it.
In the silence, Akiko could hear his heavy breathing through the doors, in the rooms behind. It was mind-bending, but far from the most confusing door she'd been in.
With Noboru's multi-attack ability, Akiko couldn't afford to be hit. She remained silent and still, senses alert.
She could hear a door opening behind her. She spun, flinging a knife toward the sound.
She watched it clang uselessly against a spinning spear, forming a solid, helicopter-blade-like shield.
"Your dead friend liked to block my attacks too," she taunted.
The blur of the spear stuttered, and she saw the twisted fury on his face for a moment.
She threw her other knife at his foot. He was almost too slow—it only clipped his boot, spraying a thin line of blood across the wood.
He was growing tired, and it made him all the easier to enrage, which only made him more tired. The best weapon was the kind that killed on its own, and Akiko strove to use only the best.
He hissed and stamped onward, charging her wildly. She flourished her wrist, and another knife appeared, completely unique—a jet black tactical knife.
In her other hand, she switched her fixed-blade knife for a balisong.
"Die!" Noboru roared.
His spear snapped out, aiming to swipe the blade through her head. She ducked and twisted her body into an attack. She spun the balisong, catching the shaft in the split handle, and swinging with the other.
The spear whistled along the path she allowed with the balisong, but with a slight twitch from Noboru, the weapon vibrated and multiplied.
The balisong snapped in two, and the spear burned at her hand as it jumped and splayed—she snarled, she'd really liked that knife, and now she'd have to replace it
The other knife snipped through his jacket but didn't draw blood.
She gritted her teeth. The spear had given him too much reach over her, but now she was a step away.
She dropped the knife and switched again—a karambit and a push dagger. She stepped forward with the dagger and forced him to twist awkwardly to defend with his spear.
His discomfort using the large weapon in close combat created an opening. Before he could get the spear across to block her, the karambit cut across his stomach deeply.
She stepped again, and again. The spear snapped across and stonewalled her, but he was weakening. She retreated on sharp toes, then advanced like a viper.
She turned a desperate bat of the spear away with the karambit to guard her hand, and stabbed forth again, severing the muscles between the left collar and shoulder.
He gasped as the pain burned through him, and his arm fell, nearly dropping the spear before he could adjust it under his strong arm. He spun, swinging the spear out and dropping his stance to try to sweep Akiko back.
Akiko jumped high—higher than he could've guessed, and stomped, boots down on his collar, snapping bone and sending him to the ground.
He attacked still, practically throwing the weapon up with only the minuscule force from his pinned arm.
She kicked the spear aside, wrenching a hole through the steel toe, but disarming him with ease.
"Surrender," she ordered.
"I cannot," he hissed.
She moved to restrain him, one knife flipping away, but his door opened beneath them. It was slow to open, metal bars aching as they began to pull back.
Akiko didn't hesitate.
Her empty hand found a knuckle blade, and she jabbed out, twisting to put all her weight behind the blow.
She nailed him in the chin, instantly knocking him out, and the door faded before it could open.
She panted, letting her knives go as she collected herself. She debated opening her door to bind him, but they were already deeper into the door-in-a-door rabbit hole than she liked. She also had no idea how Sasaki's door would interfere with the mechanics of her own.
Instead, she began opening doors en masse to get his attention.
Finally, Sasaki opened a door at the end of the hall. He looked battered but uninjured.
"Where's Serizawa-san?" she asked. "Is he with Mochizuki?"
He summoned a door to eject Noboru beside her, looking at him with disinterest as he approached. "The healer? Yeah."
"Is yours alive?"
"And better off than yours," he chuckled.
"You let Serizawa heal her?" She narrowed her eyes. "What's your play?"
"Need them alive." He shrugged with genuine indifference, only further setting off the alarm bells in her head. "We've been ordered to hand over the non-Doorkeeper rogues to Intelligence."
"On whose orders?"
"Captain Yamauchi, I presume. I heard she's holed herself and her top people up. Some secret research project."
"On whose oversight?"
His sharp eyes darted to meet hers. "Are you forgetting my captain's duty?"
She stared him down. "I would never," she snapped.
"We do our jobs at Enforcement," he said with finality.
Her eyes fell to the trophies on his waist. "Of course," she said after a moment. "I only meant to confirm."
He nodded and kicked Noboru out the door, into the desert. "Shall you see your man out?"
She held his dark eyes for a moment, then capitulated.
The relentless heat of the desert bit at her immediately, making her already warm sweat burn against her skin. She turned around and saw the closed, rugged wooden door standing there, alone in the baking dunes.
Even if she went back in, she'd be stuck in the garden unless Sasaki let her slink back to the fight. He did his job, and he did it well, she reminded herself—he was one of Captain Akabane's chosen hunters.
She took a deep breath and turned around.
Ahead of her, blood and drag marks guided her way back to reality.
She picked up Noboru and did her job.