Confucius stood on a hill overlooking Y-Zone Prime—the largest peasant settlement on Vex-5—watching as torches flickered to life in every hut. 5,000 peasants, armed with farming tools, stolen blasters, and sheer rage, gathered in the square, their voices rising in a chant: “No more lies! No more death!”
Gareth stood beside him, his prosthetic leg planted firmly, a blaster in his hand. “The guard list worked. Half of Lord Vex Ji’s men are defecting. The other half are holed up in the barracks, too scared to fight.”
Mara joined them, her dress replaced by a woman warrior’s uniform, a sword at her hip. “The machine-ninjas are leading the loyalists. They’re heading for the square now.”
Confucius nodded, gripping his quantum bow. “Then let’s give them a welcome.”
He’d spent three days preparing “ink-fire” traps—bamboo scrolls filled with a volatile mixture of glowing ink and plasma powder, rigged to explode when triggered by motion sensors. They lined the square’s perimeter, hidden beneath piles of straw.
All of them were so busy preparing their weapons that none, especially Confucious, noticed that Lila was missing.
With the little bow that Confucious gave her, and now being a good archer herself, she has decided to join the fight on her own special way: being a lone-ranger guerrillas with the objective to take down the machine-ninjas when they are less prepared or hide within a larger force in the battles and give them surprises that an archer existed.
With not much experience in preparation of a war outfit, she designed her own. She quickly wore them and deep into the woods she went, without telling anyone. She knew that the elders in the Water District and Confucious are protective of her as she is an orphan. Telling them of her intentions would only invite unnecessary persuasions to give up. After all, she was only a girl and would only be very vulnerable if caught by the ruthless machine-ninja soldiers.
The first machine-ninja emerged from the darkness, its circuit-stitched robes billowing, a blaster humming in its hand. Behind it marched 20 more, their faces expressionless, their steps synchronized like droids.
“Hold,” Confucius whispered, as the machine-ninjas entered the square. “Wait for my signal.” When the last machine-ninja was inside, he fired an arrow into a sensor, triggering the first trap. A scroll exploded, sending a wave of blue fire into the air, incinerating three ninjas. The peasants roared, charging forward.
The first battle was an oxymoron. It was chaotic because most were not military trained. Peasants clashed with machine-ninjas, their farming tools no match for blasters—but their numbers were. Confucius sniped from the hill, his arrows hitting ninjas’ power cores, disabling them without killing (a lesson from the Guru: “Destroy the machine, not the soul”).
Yet, there were unexplained smoothness in the battle. Judging from some of the machine-ninjas corps, some mysterious arrows had hit them. If the arrows did not kill them, they jeopardized their ability to fight effectively, giving peasants the opportunity to attack and defend more effectively.
Judging from the fact that Lila had disappeared and the arrows on the dead machine-ninjas, Confucius was in a sense delighted his archery student was so accurate in her shot. On the other hand, he wished his student was not Lila. He was really worried about her safety now.