Mech slayers part 11
Suna [Sand]

	Jun walked behind Ryoken the group trudged towards the city in
the distance. They had not gone directly along the  river as originally
planed because of the appearance of several Hundred large crocodile like
creatures. They floated in the water and snapped at anything that came
near them. Including each other. "This sucks." complained Jenn as she
fanned herself.
	"At least we have water." said Ryoken reassuringly.
	"Most interesting." said Phil.
	"What?" asked Itazura in a voice that told them that she was
becoming tired of listening to them all.
	"The fact that he assumes that we should be glad we have to risk
our lives for a drink." replied the boy obliviously. 
	They walked on in silence for quite some time after that. Hours
actually, no one spoke until the sun was fading over the horizon.
	"At last!" cried Jenn as the rays faded.
	Jun only frowned and started away from the river and Ryoken
nodded and followed.
	"Where are you going?" said Achika.
	"Away from the water." said Jun. "You'd best come too, we need to
set up camp."
	"What? And waste all this great cool weather?" said Jenn.
	"It could get real cold tonight." warned Jun.
	"You two don't know anything about the desert do you?" said
Ryoken.
	"Foolish women. You do not realize the dangers of walking around
a strange environment in the dark. Surely you'll feel safer here with
me." said Victor as he slunk behind them and put his hands on their
shoulders.
	"Get off you creep." said Jenn with a disgusted look on her face.
Achika just brushed his hand off.
	"Well I know when I'm not wanted." snorted the boy playfully with
a smug grin. "Lets see you act like that the next time a fire breathing
lizard steps on you. Then you'll beg for my attention." 
	"I didn't ask for it the last time it happened you twit."
screamed Jenn.
	"Only because you could not speak no doubt." said Vic coolly.
	"Victor! What the hell do you think your doing?" said Itazura as
she stood and glared at him.
	"What are you gonna do? Glare me to death? Expel me? Your not our
teacher any longer. Your just another member of my little group now, I
don't have to listen to you anymore, or ever again for that matter." the
boy's eyes shined with cold calculating intelligence as he said this.
	Itazura shrank back as if she had been slapped. She looked at the
ground and started crying. Jun stood and frowned, he walked over to her
and placed a hand on her shoulder and glared at him. She seemed to take
comfort in this and turned into his chest. 
	"Well, it seems you've finally snapped out of your daze and
returned to your old self again." said Jun simply.
	"Look at her crying in her lovers arms. Why don't you two get a
room?" asked Vic with a wild anger in his eyes.
	Itazura froze, she looked at Jun who was staring angrily at the
boy. She stood and walked over to Victor with an emotionless mask. He
stood grinning until she slapped him.
	"Horrible child, grow up." she screamed at him as he clutched his
face in surprise. She turned and walked over to the girls who were both
giving him cold looks.
	Victor laughed and scowled at them. It was a high pitched and
evil sounding laugh with no joy or happiness in it, only malice. "This is
all your fault. I could have lived like a king back home. I could have
ruled the pathetic company my father created easily and created a global
empire with it, but then you had to drag me here." he said with an angry
stare at Jun.
	Ryoken spoke up. "Who's sabotage caused it?" With that the boy
walked over to start a fire.
	Victor looked at him in disbelief. "How dare you speak to me that
way?!" he cried in a rage.
	"Grow up boy." said Jun as he went to help Ryoken.
	Victor practically shook with anger and then he simply stopped.
He walked over and sat by the fire calmly. "So, what do we do when we get
to the city?" he asked as if nothing had happened.
	Everyone but Ryoken looked at him in disbelief.
	"We need some information and cash. As bad as it sounds I
recommend we pick some pockets and hang back to watch and listen to
merchants." said Jun finally.
	"I agree." said Ryoken solemnly. 
	"You want us to steal?" said Jenn in shock.
	"No, I want us to live. We need to steal." said Jun flatly.
	"I have an idea." said Victor calmly.
	The women glared at him as if he shouldn't be allowed to speak.
	"Shoot." said Phil after a moment.
	"I say we 'invent' something from our world. With minds like ours
we could build anything we wanted given the right circumstances. There
has to be something we have on our world that they haven't thought of,
Guns or something. I noticed none of the soldiers we saw had any. If
there is some form of patent law on this world it's even better." the
boy's eyes shone with a strange greed as he spoke, this unnerved the
women, the men didn't seem to notice or care.
	"Not guns, no weapons." said Jun finally. "But a good idea still.
We just have to get some starting capitol." 
	"No guns fine. I'd be happy with anything in my pocket right
now." said Victor. All of them had serious looks on their faces. 
	Jenn realized what it was at once. The boys, like their fathers,
had just conducted a business meeting. No emotion, just logic. Their
feelings had been put aside for almost a half an hour. She found she felt
sick. It was one sight she had hoped this world would blot out, she had
seen it often in her own home and never liked it. It made her feel so
mechanical.

	The boys sat around the fire and cooked some of the meat they had
caught on their last day on the mountain. Achika stood and began to
stretch her legs in a short stroll. 
	"Don't wander off." said Vic without looking at her.
	"Why shouldn't I?" she snorted.
	"Phil." said Jun with a sigh.
	"Because we are in the desert at night." said the boy to her as
he drew in the sand with his finger in boardom.
	"So?" said Jenn she sat next to him with her arms wrapped around
her knees.
	"The desert is most active at night. That's when all of the
animals who live in it are awake." said Itazura lazily. She was next to
Ryoken and had appeared to be sleeping.
	"Big deal I can handle a few rats." snorted Achika.
	"Including those things in the river. I imagine they are probably
crawling around now. Why do you think we camped so far away from it?"
said Jun lazily as he rolled over to sleep. 
	"Rats? I was thinking more of large poisonous snakes, or bugs, or
spiders. Things like that." said Victor with an evil smile.
	"Fine." grumbled Achika as she sat down unhappily and dozed off.

.....................
		"You bastard! Where is my sister?" cried the boy as the
guards beat him. He had drawn a sword and charged the emperor. The
emperor smiled beneath his iron mask as the guards easily knocked him to
the floor. 
	"Find out how he got in and put those responsible for the area to
death immediately, and show him where his sister is and let him join
her." 

	Inu-Musumi stood with Lord Aken and walked down a dark corridor
of the Akama palace. She frowned as they passed a furnace into which some
men were throwing the bodies of young girls. All of them had been pretty
at one time. "So Gall is dead and the Mech is destroyed." said Aken
absently as he took in what she had told him.
	"Yes, but the man I saw could cause problems if he decides to
help them. I doubt if he will though. He seemed to just want to be alone.
I must find him and eliminate him myself." said Inu-Musumi calmly.
	"Why you?" asked Aken stopping for a moment.
	"It is personal." she replied curtly.
	"Very well, I do agree with your coming to me with new
information. It was a mistake to give him the role of Emperor." said Aken
looking at the body pile.
	"What is this?" said the woman watching another fresh body being
carried towards the furnace.
	"It seems he has developed an annoying and dangerous habit. Young
girls. This could cause unrest among the cattle, they could stamped if he
isn't careful." said Aken.
	"What he does is of no concern to us." said Inu-Musumi with a
reluctant stare at the young face that had been carted away.
	"You think so? That was just this months supply." he said.
	"I would tear his manhood off and shove it down his throat for
this if I had any say in the matter. I will when he is no longer of use
to us. However for the time being I am under orders." said the woman
flatly. 
Aken only nodded. 
	The pair watched as a young boy was drug by and shown the
furnace. He looked at the bodies of the young girls, all of whom had been
obviously raped before dying. "Nooooo!" he screamed in terror as he
looked at them. The guards lifted him up and tossed him screaming into
the furnace before closing grate and watching him scream and writhe in
the flames.

.............
	The next morning a huge blast echoed across the desert. The group
snapped awake. Ryoken looked around sharply and noticed that something
was missing.
	"Where are Jun and Phil?" he cried in a panicked voice.
	Jenn almost fell over laughing as she pointed towards the top of
a nearby dune. It was smoking and had obviously been blasted by a large
explosion. In the center of it all sat two blackened figures. 
	"What the hell happened?" said the one on the left as he coughed.


	"What?" said the party almost in unison as Phil and Jun tried to
explain. 
	"I said we were making gunpowder. We remembered talking last
night and that Vic had mentioned making guns for selling to the locals.
That would be a bad idea I think. But for us, it would be useful. Even
with our powers we aren't totally safe. Every animal I've seen here has
some sort of sharp edge or point on it. So we figured we'd make a gun."
said Jun.
	"I had gathered the necessary elements for gunpowder while we
were in the mountains. I had decided that it may be useful, but I had not
thought of making a gun with it until the other night." said Phil as he
rubbed a small burn on his forehead.
	"What were you planing to do with it?" said Victor in mild
interest.
	"A quick lockpick." said Phil calmly.
	"How much did you make?" said Ryoken in amazement as he looked at
the blast sight.
	"That's just it. We only made enough to fill a small casing."
replied Jun.
	"What?" said Victor in shock.
	"It seems that combustion on this world is extremely volatile."
said Phil as he looked back over his shoulder at the site.
	"Explain that in English." said Achika.
	"There is no such thing as a little bang here." said Victor
without paying much attention. "Damn, there goes my idea of inventing
cars." he muttered to himself. 
	"This was not entirely useless. We have discovered that we have a
good resistance to extreme temperature as well." said Phil after thinking
for a moment.
	"Come to think of it, we haven�t been anywhere near as
uncomfortable as we should have been in this desert." said Achika
suddenly.
	"Well we're burning daylight. Lets get moving." said Ryoken as he
stood and began to gather the little gear that they had.
	"It was stupid of us to try to cross this desert. We don't even
have any containers for water other than that stupid canteen." muttered
Victor as he stood. One of the backpacks they had scavenged from the
school had a medium sized canteen on it. They had tied a rope they had
found in the jungle to it and were throwing it into the river to collect
water safely.
	"If you had said that before we started we might have taken
another direction to begin with." said Ryoken.
	"Be silent, I told you not to argue with me in front of the
others." growled Victor quietly.
	The group started off again not noticing the great mound of sand
that moved behind them.

	A young girl sat in the damp recesses of the small hole that the
men had placed her in. She was pretty and very young. Two things that
assured her fate. She glared at those in the cage with her, most simply
sat and looked off into the distance with a haunted gaze, others looked
longingly at the door that kept them confined in the pit. All were
completely miserable. She however had a secret that could save her in the
end. In a few months or even weeks, if she had still not escaped those
who would enslave her would pay dearly for it. She had two more days to
escape.

	Jun frowned as he looked down he made an unpleasant grimace and
staggered back on one foot. "Well, trying to join with your own kind
Kobushi?" sneered Victor as he walked by chuckling to himself.
	"Sorry I Yoroi, I didn't see your mom there." retorted Jun.
	"Hey, that's fresh." said Ryoken as he pushed between the two
obliviously.	
	"EEEEWW! Jun that is so gross." Jenn screeched as she noticed.
	"Large herbivore. Allot of them going along the river like us."
noted Phil as he squat down to examine the large pile of dung Jun had
stumbled onto. 	"Shit, There's nothing to scrape it off on."
muttered Jun as he looked around for a rock or something in the sand.
	"That's not all. These aren't just animal tracks. I think we
found a caravan trail." said Ryoken as he looked towards the city. They
had finally been able to see it from the low desert floor after traveling
in the desert for a three days. "We should be able to spot them fairly
easily." 
	"But will they want us too? We haven't got anything really of use
to them. They'll likely be merchants. At any rate we should have expected
to possibly run into other travelers along the way. This is a very good
route to the city we see and probably has allot of traffic." said Victor
as he stood atop a nearby dune. 
	"I agree with him for once." said Itazura reluctantly.
	"Should we try to contact them? It will be safer for us if were
with people who know their way around the desert and the land, not to
mention the fact that we'll have more numbers." said Ryoken as he looked
at Jun.
	Jun frowned and realized that since he had made himself leader of
the group they were looking to him for an answer. He thought about it for
a few moments and sighed. "I say we see if they are friendly. They may be
able to help us, if not I'm pretty sure we could get away fairly easily."

	"This is not wise. I say we go on alone for a while. You saw how
those other people reacted to your presence last time." said Victor
curtly. "We're doing fine on our own. I'd feel better about the city if
we found out about it on our own."
	"We can't just run away every time we come to a city Vic." said
Jun with an annoyed tone.
	"I'm not saying that we should, I say we send just one of us into
the city to test the water so to speak, I won't trust just some guy we
met in the desert." said Vic angrily. He did not like Jun's tone.
	"Who would we send? Jun? This sounds like another of your little
plots to become leader Victor." said Achika as she glared at the boy.
	"Please don't be so condescending my dear. If he went in alone
he'd never find his way back. I was thinking of Ryoken or the nerd."
Victor gave them his trademark smirk as he said this.
	"We make contact with the Caravan." said Jun finally.
	Victor frowned "We don't even know if it is a caravan." he said
simply.
	With that the group started walking again.
TBC....

	Finally I figured something that I could do with these guys. I
got sick of them just wandering around aimlessly. [That's what stopped my
writing this before.] Some interesting developments coming soon. I've got
allot of stuff planed for this one now. This chapter was just to get the
ball rolling. What are the sand things? Who the hell was that girl and
what has she got to do with any of this? Also the caravan has to be delt
with. But my dear friends that is a whole two chapters away!
	First we must deal with Dan and his little problem, a hot headed
young ninja girl. He's defeated her once but she may be more than he can
handle this time. Find out about it in the next chapter: Yamichisai
[Little Shadow]
Ja! Catbert25
C&C to: Catbert25@juno.com


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