Ekobean: AT LONG LAST!!! CHAPTER EIGHT!!! Muhuhuhuhuhu.....

Midnight Flight chapter eight

The following moments were blurry to Rioichi. He could feel himself being dragged along the palace's roof. The clay shingles make sharp clanks as his canes fell upon them.

His consciousness returned to him a minute later. His vision cleared, and he shook his head to clear it fully.

This is where he found himself. He was dangling clear off the edge of the roof, one leg hanging useless to the side. Rioichi gasped and looked about frantically. That's when he spotted the daimyo.

The look on the daimyo's face was worse that Rioichi had ever seen. Masaiya was holding Rioichi over the side by one leg, his hand wrapped firmly around Rioichi's left ankle.

"You did not truly believe that I would allow you to escape so easily," laughed Masaiya, "did you, Rioichi-san?"

"As a matter of fact..." Rioichi began.

"Enough," the daimyo hissed, his snakelike tongue curving outward between his needle-sharp teeth, "your time in this world ended a long time ago."

"Then why am I still here?" Rioichi retorted, his masked eyes shrinking to mere slits.

"That is a very good question." Without allowing Rioichi to speak again, Masaiya released his hold on the raccoon. But even from the moment he let go, Rioichi was already flipping backward in midair, his cane's held tightly for the one-shot plan he had been thinking through as he and the daimyo spoke.

Rioichi threw out his cane, away toward the daimyo's shin. Even as he fell, he heard the satisfying "crack" of metal on bone. The raccoon's aim was keen. Rioichi had struck one of the many pressure points of the body. Putting pressure on any of these pressure points resulted in the body going limp, not to mention extreme pain. And Masaiya, in his arrogance, had not realized that during their whole talk, Rioichi had been staring at his shin the entire time.

The daimyo's body buckled just as Rioichi had planned. A high-pitched scream ran through his mouth. He fell forward, sliding down the smooth shingles of the rooftop, before going into a free fall. Rioichi was watching him. He took in every detail of his fall, his limbs flailing useless, his head turning in every direction, desperately searching for some means of stopping himself.

But this lead Rioichi to the flaw in his plan. He had to find some means of stopping himself. Panic slowly began to rise in his throat. He look about wildly, desperately. A small sparkle caught his eye. Blue auras were floating around the very same cable he had entered from.

He would have only one shot at landing on it. Otherwise he would become another stain on the palace grounds.

The cable was close now. So close...

"Spire Jump!!" he screamed. He closed his eyes tight and spun in midair. The moment his feet clamped around the top of the oil lamp his heart leapt. He was free! He was alive!

The daimyo fell past him just seconds later. Rioichi watched him fall, but turned is head away, eyes shut tight, just before the weasel hit the ground.

But there was nothing to stop the sound. The sound of bones snapping and popping apart, the "squelch" of bodily fluids contracting as his body made contact with the hard, brick cobblestones of the palace. Rioichi's other cane fell by just seconds later, the gold gleaming in the beauty of the now rising sun. He saw it land on a distant rooftop. He would have to get it before the resident got any ideas.

Nearly five guards were gathered around Masaiya's crumpled form. With the distraction of Masaiya's body, the would not notice the lights sway slightly. With a number of spire jumps, he landed on the safe rooftop. Without a second look back at the grisly scene behind him, Rioichi leapt off of the roof and on to the next. A poor artist, who had been awakened by the commotion, was looking out his window just in time to see Rioichi drop to the next rooftop. With this image burned into his mind, the artist began working tirelessly on a copy of this vision. This picture would appear on wanted posters across Japan, and would later find its way into the case file of one Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox.

But there was one other thing that the artist had captured, though he didn't think much of it. A large birdlike figure silhouetted against the setting moon. This bird's name was Clockerwerk.

Clockwerk was watching Rioichi bound across the rooftops, away from the crime scene. His flashing eyes then turned the lights of gathering guards around the daimyo's body. Clockwerk shook his metallic head and sighed. "Very good, Cooper, very good." Without another word, the mechanical owl flew off on silent wings into the darkness.

THE END