Reassigned

"Are you out of your mind, Sakura?" Dante wraps his arms around me.  Oh, Buddha, it feels so good and I've waited so long . . .  "I've always felt something for you."

 He goes in for a kiss- the very thing I've so desperately for the last five years.

"Hey, Sakura, get out of bed!"  Utamaru bangs on the bedroom door, shattering the dream.  Dammit, wolfboy!  Could you have waited for a damned minute?!

"I was enjoying that dream, you know!"  I snap.  I think I was going to get laid!  Dreams are the only way I've gotten more than some jerk's phone number for the last six months.  Grr. . .

"You can go back to sleep after you talk to Hiiragi-sama."  Utamaru obviously expected me to snap at him as I look at the alarm clock.  Ohh . . . It's four in the morning.  Did I really just get in two hours ago? 

"He wants you in his chambers as soon as you can shower, get dressed, and pack for about a month of fighting somewhere remote."  My favorite werewolf continues.

"Give me an hour."  It'll take less than that, but I desperately need some sleep.  That last Narukagami had a supernatural parent and I've got a bad blood hangover from it.

It takes about half an hour to get the shower and pack.  I don't bother with getting dressed before I crawl into bed.  My now-trademark dark teal Chinese dress, black leggings, and Mai's famous red scarf are just sitting on the chair across from me.   Maybe I'll get to finish off that wonderful dream about Dante . . .

It doesn't even feel like I even closed my eyes before Utamaru's back.  "It's time."

I slip into my clothes and stagger out of bed. 

Á  à    À      à    Á

Daina-sama is wide awake and looked like he'd been for hours.  I've heard he doesn't sleep and it looks true to me. Hell, he was eating breakfast!  I could use more than the last slice of a three-day-old pizza (a miracle in itself, considering the bunch I live with) I took out of the refrigerator before I left. 

"Good morning, Sakura," He greets.  "I am sorry to wake you so early, but something vitally important has come to my attention."

That didn't bode well for the rest of my housemates.  Normally, when something of vital importance comes to our grandmaster's attention, it means that there's going to be a huge fight and more than a few people are going to get killed before it ended.   "Will the guys get involved in this?"  I see the full magnitude of what I'd been called in about in his eyes and get scared.

"Not unless something happens to you." That gives me an idea of how highly Hiiragi Daina thinks of my skills. 

"You are to go to Mallet Island and enter the castle there." This really didn't sound good.  "You will join Dante Sparda there and accompany him until either the battle ends or you both lack the strength to continue."

Dante!  "When does the plane leave?" I'd brought my pack in with me and I was already wearing Chimaburesakura and Suiken through the scarf around my waist.

"You have two hours."  Daina knew I was exhausted.  "In that time, I suggest you eat something and get all the sleep you can."

He's not quite finished with me as I turn to go.  "Sakura, be very, very careful."

I gulp.  Is it that bad?

"Mai's assassin will be waiting in the castle." Ias he really giving me a shot at revenge- a shot that not even her sister could get?  "Kill him as slowly and painfully as you can."

Á  à     À       à     Á

Kaun and James are awake when I get back to the house we all share.  Kaun is busily fixing breakfast and I can hear my favorite Irishman warbling away in the shower upstairs.

Utamaru is still up; as I discover when Jamie hits a note the werewolf isn't fond of.  "How much money's it gonna take to shut you up?"

"More than ye've got."  Jamie replies.  I can't help but laugh. 

Kaun notes my pack and the fact that I'm already armed.  "You're on another mission, Sakura?"  Not really a question.  "May I ask who your partner is?"

"Dante Sparda."  I reply coolly, knowing that the fact I was going into battle with Dante would rankle a bit.  To quote James MacCaullay, "They're friends about half the time.  T'other half o'the time, they can't stand each other."  That's partly because (I have the sneaking suspicion), Dante likes me as more than a friend and Kaun just happens to be in his way. (Ex or not, Kaun is not going to let a half-devil get his hands on me- even if he is one of his friends!)

That stung him a bit.  "And I suppose you're be all alone?"

"Unless one of us can't get up."

A deep sigh of concern and quite possibly disgust.  "I wish you didn't possess your formidable reputation."

"Or that Dante didn't possess his." I was teasing him.  "I have to be gone in an hour and a half." 

His expression fell as he almost dropped the wok.  "Daina sent you out on a mission that will most likely kill you without contacting your family!?!"  That was a lot more than a friend's concern, despite the fact that it'.

"Does it look like I've got any kind of a choice?"  I knew his icy facade was quickly coming apart, but one of us had to hold up. "I was already assigned to this before I crawled out of bed."  Unbidden, the image of my best friend trying to talk to me as she crumpled with the devil's sword through her chest came flying to the front of my mind.  "Daina's given me a clear shot at the hellspawn that sent Mai to her grave.  He's in that castle and not even Hirari's gotten the chance to go after him."

He remembered that awful night all too well.  "Have you forgotten how easy it was for him to kill her?"  He lost it and I saw a tear.  "I still have nightmares about what he would have done to you!"

This wasn't for me – it was for Mai.  "Why do you think I've trained so damned hard and gone after every demon I can find in the last six months?  It certainly isn't because I like staying out until dawn.  Every one that I kill leads me a little closer to him and when he dies, Mai can rest."

James came down the stairs in the midst of Kaun starting to cool off as breakfast started to burn.  Did I say "starting to burn"?  I meant starting to carbonize or, -if you live with us- Utamaru-level burning.  I have yet to meet a werewolf who can cook well. 

"Are ye tryin' to burn the house down?"  He snapped Kaun's attention back to the blackening stir-fry. 

A trademark noise of utter dismay as he scrambled to turn the stove off and get the wok into the sink and cool it off.  A nervous laugh.  "No." 

"What's got your head on backwards?" Perfect vintage Highwayman- direct and not exactly polite by the standards of his Japanese housemates.

"Sakura has been temporarily reassigned.  By herself."

I curl up on the couch, trying to sleep as I think about Mai.  Are you sitting on a cloud, watching over me right now? Are you out there somewhere, tormented by this and crying for revenge?  Are you sitting on that tombstone in the graveyard where all we descendants of the Samurai Spirits will someday rest, lonely for a friend to join you?  Are you roaming that castle and tugging on Dante's coat?  Or are you just lying in that cold grave – a grave I should rightly be occupying?

Either way, my blood sister, would you mind coming here and wrapping your wings around me?

Á  à     À       à     Á

On the plane, my waking thoughts are still with Mai.  Is she crying for vengeance- as Hirari would have, or is she busy trying to console her grieving family- especially her mother?   I have not seen Hattori Kaede since Mai's funeral, when she gave me my best friend's scarf, but I have heard that she is not taking the death of her youngest and favorite child well at all.  I have even heard whispers that she has lost her sanity – whispers I pray are only malicious gossip.

As for Hirari, she hates me for what I could not prevent that awful night.  I dread the night her fury and hatred become too much for her to bear.  She would be all too happy to send me into the grave to join her sister.  Or is there something much more beneath her cold façade?  Is there something her pride will not allow her to show-or even feel?  I know she dearly loved her little sister, but possesses a great deal of her father's distinct to keep the rest of the world- including her family- at arm's length for fear of losing them.

The woman next to me- who strongly resembles my mother- knows I am deeply upset.  "Is everything all right?"  She asks, concerned. 

"As long as I don't think about my best friend or her family."  I couldn't lie to her.  I'm too damned tired.  Even if I weren't, it's very hard to lie to a woman resembles your mother- the mother you haven't seen since your baby sister was christened.

When this whole mess is over- if I live to see the end of it- I'm going back home to my own family and era.  I hope I can spend at least a year there and straighten out this mess called the last three years. 

Buddha, Sasame's fifteen, Akira's twelve, Mirei just turned eight, and baby Suzaku turns four in three months. Nothing to me can be worse than seeing the sister I held in my arms for her christening and when I come home four years later, she looks up at me, then looks at our mother and asks who the strange lady who looks like her is, not realizing that it's her big sister. 

I hang my head to cry.  I'm such a bad daughter . . . 

Fortunately, the woman next to me has gone back to sleep and doesn't hear me or see the tears streaming down my face.   Sometime shortly afterward, I fall asleep and wake to her gently shaking me. 

"We've landed, dear."  She says, not seeing the traces of dried tears on my cheeks.  "The ferry to Mallet Island's already waiting.  Although I have no idea why a girl like you would want to go there.  The place is full of ghosts."

This time, I feel good enough to lie to her.  "I have an interest in old castles, even haunted ones."  She's a normal human- she doesn't need to know that I am the Tachibana Sakura who mysteriously disappeared in 1815, that I slay demons for a living, that I have my swords hidden in my luggage well enough to pass even the United States' neurotic security checks- one of Shainto's best tricks-, or even that she's talking to someone who isn't just a pretty girl with strangely dyed hair.  There are some things – a lot of them, actually- that the world of skyscrapers, tourists, and reality television shouldn't know about.