Shadow Knight: Raiders of the Lost Moon

By Maskedhero100

Chapter 7: The Poisonous Embrace

Lunar City, Northside View Apartment's, Room 445: January 3rd, 2021: 4:28 AM

Around the same time Shadow Knight and Spectress were investigating the lead they had on The Shogun's trail in the FEIND Bunker, back in Lunar City, Harry Vincent was up, in his pajamas, trying to calm his nerves with a drink.

He had just learned from Blacksmith about the assault on Kishi Manor and about Rachel and Kairi's kidnapping by agents of the same madman that had kidnapped her five years ago and was anxiously waiting for news regarding their rescue.

He wished he didn't have to wait for a phone call, he wished he could have gone after her himself instead of Shadow Knight.

He was a retired SLEET soldier, he knew how to fight and handle himself…hell he still had his old SLEET soldier combat suit.

It was one of the older models and by now was rendered obsolete by the newer models SLEET's agents and soldiers wore, but still did its job.

But if he knew anything about Kagae, he wouldn't have let him come.

Though Harry doubted that would have stopped him from coming after her with him anyway.

Sure, he was her brother and he probably could handle it, but this was Rachel!

That woman meant a lot to him…a whole lot.

He reached into his pajama pants pocket and pulled out a small box, he clicked the lid open to look at what was inside… a ring.

A wedding ring.

He had gotten it from the Jewelers on 43rd street, and he had insisted on making sure it wasn't a diamond ring. He knew Rachel didn't care for diamonds. He wanted to get her something else, something special…the right precious stone to show how much he cared for her and knew her as a person.

So he had gotten her a sapphire ring…her birthstone.

She had been born in Japan in September.

He hoped she would like it…but now the trouble was finding the right time to present it to her…as well as finding the nerve.

He knew he loved her, but every time he tried to ask her the most important question a man could ask a woman, his mouth failed him and he ended up hating himself inside for missing his chance again.

So far he had tried seven times to present this ring to her, and now…this happened.

He hated being here while the woman he loved was being held hostage on the other side of the world by a genocidal madman who planned to do god knew what to her.

He hated being able to do nothing to help this situation, he felt like if he didn't do something soon he would scream!

That was when he heard a knock on his apartment door.

"Huh?" Harry Vincent asked in surprise, looking at the digital clock on his nightstand to check the time, "who could be here at this time of the night?"

That was when it hit him, there was only ONE person he knew who would be here this time of night.

It must be Shadow knight!

But, why would he be here?

Why would he be knocking on his door?

Usually, he didn't do that, usually, he just shadow-walked in or played his usual spooky "ghostly voice" crap like always.

Deciding to investigate, Harry Vincent got up and walked to the front door.

He looked through the peephole of his door, and nearly doubled over in surprised shock.

He opened up the door to see his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

It was Rachel!

"Rachel, what…?" he began to speak, but Rachel quickly wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

The two of them didn't say anything.

Rachel was always good at telling him what was on her mind, and right now, she didn't want to talk.

Still lip-locked, the two of them moved backward and re-entered Harry Vincent's apartment, closing the door behind them.

Two and a half hours later, the two of them lay beside one another, naked as newborns beneath the bedcovers of Harry's bed.

Looking straight up at the ceiling.

Panting and moaning from making love.

Finding her normal voice again after screaming in pleasure a moment ago, Rachel sighed "Thank you, Harry…I needed this…I've been through a lot recently."

"I'm just glad your safe, when I heard that you'd been kidnapped by that maniac I was worried sick!" Harry Vincent said, reaching over to stroke the side of Rachel's cheek.

He noticed that she visibly flinched when he did so.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked in concern.

"Nothing Harry…" Rachel insisted, and then yawned "I just don't feel like talking about what happened right now, okay?"

"Okay" Harry consented she had a point, "okay, we'll talk about what happened when your ready to do so. But for now, I think we both should get some sleep."

"it'll be dawn in a few hours. You're going to be late at the firm, there's no way you are making it in to work tomorrow." Rachel pointed out.

"Neither are you, Miss CEO," Harry Vincent said playfully, "but something tells me that neither of us is going to care much about that. We'll just call in sick tomorrow, then we'll spend the whole day doing whatever we need to do to put this horrible business with The Shogun far behind us…or we could spend the day in bed. I could be your manservant for the day. Your choice."

Rachel smiled and giggled at his remark, then shut her eyes and went to sleep.

Harry smiled at Rachel's sleeping form, thanked god that she had been returned to him safe and sound, and then went to sleep as well.

The adrenaline from staying up afraid for her life had been burned out of him by making love to her, he fell into a deep sleep less than a minute after his head hit his pillow.

He was so dead asleep, he didn't notice Rachel wake up and turn and look at him…with a sinister look on her face.

"No…you'll be the one calling in sick tomorrow," she said to herself and pushed the bed covers off of herself and walked towards where her clothes were lying in the middle of the apartment and pulled out her IPhone, and dialed a number.

She then placed the iPhone to her ear and waited for the call to connect.

"911, what is your emergency?" the 911 operator asked on the IPhone.

"Please, you have to help me!" Rachel said urgently, "My boyfriend, something is wrong with him. He's coughing up blood! I'm at Northside View Appartments in room 445, hurry!"

Rachel then hung up the call and made another one…to a secure number.

Placing the call to her ear, Rachel turned to look at the sleeping Harry Vincent…her eyes full of contempt.

"It is done my lord," Rachel said into the IPhone.

"Your quite sure he was infected?" The Shogun's voice asked.

"Trust me…" Rachel smiled sinisterly, "I was VERY thorough with applying the virus you gave me on his wretched body."

"Well done Shinigami, you've served me well, " The Shogun said proudly, "Now…proceed with the rest of your mission. I believe you need to have a visit with your mother tonight."

"Understood" Rachel nodded, "I'll give her the virus you infected me with, it won't kill her, right?"

"Not her, but that westerner that calls himself your father won't be so lucky" The Shogun confirmed, "After you have done that, I have one more task for you to complete before you can come home."

"What is that my lord Shogun?" Rachel asked.

"The Yokai's allies…" The Shogun answered, "I want you to terminate them…all of them, starting with his weapons and gadget maker."

"As you wish" Rachel acknowledged.

The Watchtower, Historic District: January 3rd, 2021: 6:28 AM

Rachel Kishi looked out from her perch towards the historic districts clock tower

Marty Osmond was no doubt currently in there working on his repairs to Nightwatch-001 following its sabotage by the Ninjazons, unaware that it had been done by a Ninjazonized Rachel Kishi.

He wouldn't see her coming.

Activating her Ninjazon armor's cloaking device, she then leaped down to where the secret entrance was located.

She then made her way into the Watchtower through the disabled security systems of the Shadow Knight's lair up to the main level located within the face of the clocktower.

She looked around but found no sign of Marty Osmond.

He had to be here, the power had been restored and while Nightwatch-001 was still trashed, she could make out evidence of someone having been here…and having taken some items from the workstation where Marty and her bastard brother liked to tinker building their crime-fighting gadgets for Kagae to use in his crusade against the criminal underworld.

So he had been here, but now he wasn't.

If he wasn't using the Watchtower, then why was the power still on?

Sure, her "abduction" and sabotage would have put Marty on edge, but he wasn't the kind of person who would leave the house lights on if he wasn't home.

Something was off about all of this.

Rachel pushed her unease aside and reminded herself that she had a mission, and she was not going back to her Lord Shogun without making sure she had accomplished ALL of the goals he had given her.

He was here, she was sure of it.

She decided to try and find a trail to follow to find her quarry.

Walking forward out of the elevator she began her hunt for Marty Osmond, aka Blacksmith.

She may not be the world's greatest detective, but she had her ways of finding people thanks to her training as a Ninjazon and her combat suits capabilities.

A heat signature, forensic evidence of where he could have gone from here, stuff like that.

She flipped her mask's lenses to infrared mode first.

That was when she noticed it, or rather the special lenses in her Ninjazon suit's helmet saw it.

There was a mess of infrared laser beams in the form of a net on the floor of the seemingly empty Watchtower, coming from all four corners of the room.

They were the beams of some kind of infrared motion sensor trigger system, like the kind that was used on automatic doors at grocery stores…and she had just crossed into it.

Before she could react, the devices that the infrared beam motion sensors were attached to came online.

The last thing Rachel saw before she lost all thought…was the sight of a bunch of well-hidden lights shining a hypnotic strobe pattern from all corners of the room.

She fell to the floor, her eyes closed sleepily, and then she ultimately fell into the blackness of a dreamless sleep.

By the time she regained her senses, she found herself awakening from what felt like a long deep sleep.

She blinked her eyes sleepily and looked around in confusion, wondering why she was no longer in her bed.

She found herself in some kind of stainless steel interrogation room, sitting in a chair that was welded to the floor, in front of her was a steel table…and she found out she wasn't alone.

Standing before her on the opposite side of the steel table was two highly decorated SLEET commanders that she recognized from her brother's stories about his adventures.

When their father ran Kishi enterprises before she had taken over for him, he had worked with SLEET as well, but she had never met the two who ran the organization…until now.

"Commander's Arcane and Hardcastle?" she asked warily, still not sure if she was having some kind of weird dream… like she always had when she had her medicated tea before bed.

"She got our names right this time," Commander Hardcastle said with relief, "Good, I had almost lost patience with being called a 'foreign devil' by her while in her sleep."

"I guess the antidote still works," Commander Arcane said casually, "welcome back, Miss Kishi."

"Agh!" Rachel winced, rubbing her forehead which right now felt like someone was squeezing her brain in a vice, "Why does my head hurt so bad?"

"That's a side effect," Commander Hardcastle said, "every one of the women that we've detoxed that tree sap drug out of them in the previous crisis involving The Shogun has had similar headaches as their brain goes into withdrawal."

She then broke away from her husband who stood vigilant before the confused Rachel on the other end of the table and walked towards her carrying something in her hands.

"Here…" she said to Rachel, handing her a cup of brownish liquid, "It taste's bad, but it will help with your headaches."

"Thank you"

Rachel graciously accepted the cup and took a sip.

Yeah, it did taste terrible.

But if it helped with the pain she was feeling in her head, it would be worth it.

"Where am I?" Rachel asked, after managing to keep herself from ralphing the liquid back up.

"You are on the HMS Damocles" Commander Hardcastle informed her, "Blacksmith called us when he found you unconscious in the Watchtower. He had set up a trap to catch any Ninjazons that might come back to the tower to try and wreck the place further while he tried to re-establish Shadow Knight's network. He had used the acquired Mastermind technology he and Shadow Knight had been studying to find a way to block its effects in his trap and he found you there when he received notification that his device had been triggered."

"What happened? I don't remember anything past taking that tea before the New Year approached" Rachel asked, still trying to keep the room from spinning.

"You were kidnapped by The Shogun…" Commander Hardcastle answered, and then hesitated to finish her sentence, "Or so we thought."

Commander Arcane drew a sharp breath and spoke to her, "Miss Kishi, we were informed by your brother that you had been abducted by the terrorist known as 'The Shogun', and I can rightly say I had an inkling, either one of us, about what he had in mind for you and your niece. But I have to admit…I didn't expect to find you back here on your native soil, dressed like this."

"Dressed like what?" Rachel asked in confusion, having regained enough cognitive thinking to process what the Commander of SLEET was saying.

She looked down to see what the two commanders were talking about…and gawked in disbelief.

She was wearing the armor of a Ninjazon!

That was when it all came flooding back.

The tree sap drug made a victim susceptible to suggestion and subservient, but it didn't affect memory.

She remembered being inducted into the Ninjazons, trained in their ways in the years following her brother's last encounter with them and The Shogun, being their mole in Kishi Enterprises to help finance their campaigns, and even worse…she remembered everything she had done recently.

She gasped in horror as she remembered nearly stabbing her brother to death, believing The Shogun's lies that he had been the one who had raped her and murdered Mariko, then sent her to assassinate Kagae's allies and friends, and then there was what she did to Harry and her father Martin Kishi…oh god!

She remembered that the Shogun had infected her with the Red Sun Virus and sent her to Lunar City to cause an outbreak.

Since she was Japanese, the virus wouldn't affect her, but it made her a carrier.

And she had called the EMS on Harry to get those doctors infected.

"Kagae, Harry…Dad!" she said in horror, "What have I done!?"

"Don't worry about Mr. Vincent or your father" Commander Arcane assured her, "We got to them in time and administered the cure before we had an outbreak on our hands."

"What?" Rachel said in a combination of shocked disbelief and relief, "How did you know that they had been infected?"

"You told us" Commander Hardcastle answered, "Turns out The Mastermind's tech makes a VERY effective way to get people to tell the truth. We interrogated you while you were in a trance and then managed to get ahold of them both and administered the cure to the Red Sun Virus."

"But this is most disconcerting," Commander Arcane said with great concern, "If The Shogun can make Japanese people into carriers of this virus, then he is more dangerous than we feared. We didn't even detect you on our slipstream detection network. He could infect his army and send them out anywhere in the world and we wouldn't even know it. We could still administer the cure, but not before a significant amount of people get infected and die of the virus. We need to find him and end his threat once and for all."

"If Shadow Knight hasn't done it already, but better safe than sorry that we chase the bastard done instead. Maybe we can nip this in the bud before we have a pandemic on our hands" Commander Hardcastle suggested hopefully.

"I haven't heard a word from our Japanese chapter about Shadow Knight since he left, we thought he was just being stubborn and going it alone like usual," Commander Arcane said wisely, looking at Rachel "but something tells me that something went wrong, didn't it?"

"It was a trap" Rachel admitted ruefully, "I nearly killed Kagae under The Shogun's orders, but then some woman in black with a kabuki mask came in and rescued him."

"Spectress!" Commander Hardcastle declared in recognition, "How did she know he was in danger?"

"Does it matter, the important thing is she rescued him" Commander Arcane said with glee, "That means that they are on the case together…Good news at last!"

"He still has Kairi" Rachel pointed out, "He still has one card he can play against my brother to get what he wants."

"What is it he wants?" Commander Hardcastle asked, "Besides genocide on a massive scale?"

"He wants the city of Tsuin obviously" Commander Arcane deduced wisely, "and now he has the map and the key to the city doesn't he?"

"Yes…" Rachel nodded, "because I told him about them and he managed to get them from Kagae. But it's not what we all thought."

"What do you mean?" Commander Arcane asked warily, he didn't like the sound of that.

"It's not another Tree of Life he's after, he didn't need the map and key necklaces to find the city. He already knows where it is located, he's known for centuries." Rachel explained, "he doesn't need another source of immortality, he's already immortal. His encounter with Shadow Knight showed him that although he can't be killed, he isn't invincible. In a world full of superhuman heroes eventually, someone will stop him for good. He's after something else…something that will make him unstoppably dangerous."

"What?" Commander Hardcastle asked in concern.

"Princess Kaguya-Himme" Rachel answered.