Author's Note: Yes, the chapters are short. Rather than post the entire story complete, I'll post each section when I finish it as a separate chapter. I figure this is better than having people wait for months until I complete the entire thing. I hope, right?
Disclaimer: None of the characters or setting of Samurai 7 are mine, and the only payment I receive for my fanfiction is the occasional smile on the face of a reader. So smile already!
***
Flower Child
***
It was an almost suspiciously perfect day. The sun beat down just warmly enough, but not too warmly, and a gentle breeze cooled everything off by just the right amount without being strong enough to blow away lightweight unattended objects. Every so often a dark shape would throw its shadow over the village of Kanna, but it was just a vast puffy cloud pushed along by the wind, not a marauding Benigumo.
On the ground, the only lumbering, vaguely threatening mechanical samurai was Kikuchiyo, and the dark shapes flitting through the surrounding forest were admiring peasant girls, not Mimizuku.
Relief and disappointment warred in Katsushiro's soul.
He was scouting, but nothing had happened that required more than a suspicious glare from him since Manzo's betrayal, which had smoothed out into the kind of all-enveloping harmony people meditated for years to achieve. For everybody else, at least. Katsushiro was still troubled after killing for the first time, but it felt wrong to be uneasy when everyone else was, well, easy, carefree and happy.
It would almost be worth the trouble of a Nobuseri attack, he decided, just to find an outlet for him dammed-up nervous energy.
Just swinging a sword would probably do something for his nerves. He decided to bring his scouting to the meadow overlooking the canyon. It was generally private there, and if those gorgeous flowers were still in bloom he could pick a bouquet to leave on Kirara's doorstep…or, failing that, he could practice decapitating moves by whacking of flowerheads.
With a feeling of empowerment at having made a decision, Katsushiro set off through the forest with a cheerful grin and a jaunty whistle each wrestling for access to his lips. He drew his sword and made a few flashy cuts in the air, to the ooohing admiration of the farmer girls in the shadows, and finished his impromptu performance by slicing through a tree. Granted, it was a sapling, but he supplemented his move with a savage cry, which was enough to frighten off his unwelcome followers.
When he arrived at the meadow he was alone, and he was happily looking forward to an afternoon of solitude, but the flower-spangle grassy expanse was already occupied.
At first he didn't recognize the figure striding along the canyon edge. As figures went, it was recognizable enough—long coat of eye-catching red, thick head of sulfur-yellow hair, narrow frame—in fact, Katsushiro should probably have known that figure anywhere just by the deadly spring in its step; but it seemed so unlikely to find Kyuzo here.
More, the red-coated samurai seemed to be whistling.
Curiosity, morbid or otherwise, kept Katsushiro in the shadow at the forest's edge. He watched as, still whistling a disconcertingly catchy tune—its jauntiness didn't bear thinking of—Kyuzo ambled to the center of the field and threw himself down amid the flowers. The boy samurai thought he heard a contented sigh, but couldn't be sure.
He crept through the trees, his footsteps covered—mostly—by the whisper of grass in the light breeze. Even when he slipped up, Kyuzo didn't seem to notice. His attention had been captured by a bobbing thing with several dozen feathery pink petals. He watched it bob in the wind, and the corners of his lips curled up in a smile.
More startling than the expression was the fact that Kyuzo showed no sign of fighting it. There was no shuddering of the mouth as its muscles resisted the change, no disparaging huff to dismiss that look of happiness, and the smile lingered.
Something like terror struck to the heart of Katsushiro. It wasn't that what he was seeing was so dangerous—yet it was threatening, seeing someone he thought he could rely on to be gruff and silently deadly and vaguely menacing turn into an individual with almost poetic appreciation of flowers. The world was turned upside down. Black was white, night was day, and Katsushiro couldn't become any more confounded if he returned to Kanna and found Shichiroji preparing to retire as a monk.
And the whistling…
Katsushiro didn't stop running until he reached the outskirts of Kanna. Even when he did, he paused only long enough to gap for breath before he resumed, at a brisk walk, his journey to the inner skirts of the village, if that was what they could be called—as even the center of Kanna had a habit of always looking like the outskirts of some larger town.
Just as his nerves had calmed down somewhat, they sparked back to electrifying life at the sound of two dozen arrows sinking into metal.
"Fine," a voice said, almost grudgingly, as if speaking was an unpleasant chore. "Next."
Katsushiro stared.
Not only had every arrow fired by the farmers landed squarely in its target, but Kyuzo was directing them.
There was not a flower in sight.