Author's Note: Hello, we are the Arcan Blades. I, Jade, is your dear author returning for another round of fiction. I'd like to remind you of the following:
We do NOT own Samurai 7.
We are advocates of open mindedness.
I don't claim to be an expert on anything, but you can have the assurance that I have followed Samurai 7 religiously and will rigidly attempt to keep them in character to the greatest of my ability.
If you encounter anything in this fic that displeases or upsets you, you have the option to either leave or continue on in spite of it. Flaming is only going to be a waste of time as flames will be immediately disregarded and/or laughed at.
If this fic should seem like a Mary Sue to you, I will get on my knees and beg forgiveness. I was trying it out and seeing what would happen if I tried to write one. This is why you should follow the next reminder.
Read and REVIEW. This is very important.
All right! Are you ready? I hope you enjoy! Here is the fic entitled…
Elusive
A Samurai 7 fanfic
Intro
What makes devotion different from love? Is there a line between them? Does it always have to be love all the time? Can't it be something with less fire, although given with just as much weight? How would you know the difference? How would you persist with the feeling, if you yourself do not know which one it is?
How do you break down a silence without words? How do you reach out and hold what you cannot touch? How do you let go, when you have never held it in the first place? How would you know when you have been answered when you have never asked the question?
They said that the moonlight causes you to go mad. Thus 'lunacy' was coined. Luna…blamed upon the moon. The madness. Perhaps everything was madness too. Everything could've so easily been a dream. And perhaps, it might have been.
To the woman, it might have been all a dream.
To the man, it might have been all madness.
It cannot be answered, for not even they knew what it had been that compelled them both to do what they did. It could've all been the fault of that moon. That full moon that floated above in the forests so far beyond Kougakyo—so far beyond the city. The goddess who sat guiding that moon must've just watched as well. And let it all happen.
What a way to place blame... although all the same, no one was ungrateful.
The victory of Kanna Village over the great Nobuseri forces had caused a tremendous ripple among the people. For mere farmers to have overpowered those great samurai-turned mega machines was an unheard-of feat. So amazing that Ukyo himself, the son of Ayamaro and now the new manager of Kougakyo, was compelled to begin a movement that, though many were thankful for, was supremely uncharacteristic. The farmers had achieved glory, and freedom. The seven samurai—the seven deities who guarded rice, as Heihachi had said—were triumphant, although not without great price.
Gorobei was dead. The ancient inherited rice paddies beyond the island of the village had been decimated by Nobuseri forces, as a fourth of the village continued to smolder into the day. There were dozens of farmers injured. The rebuilding of the village-turned-fortress began right after the Nobuseri's Red Spider and Lightning were finished off, and continued endlessly with Shichiroji and Heihachi choreographing the entire process.
Kambei had vanished on his own without so much as word to anybody else, and his whereabouts were unknown to the farmers. The Water Maiden, Kilara, had been the last to see him walking away at the cliffside, drenched by rain, and heading for unknown ground. He left behind all the other samurai, and his self-proclaimed student, Katsushiro, was less than pleased of the matter, which said nothing for the already irritated disposition of the mechanized samurai Kikuchiyo.
Kyuzo had also vanished. And no one really knew why he had disappeared by himself like he did.
As a samurai, Kyuzo was clearly one of the most talented in Kougakyo, if not the entire land. As a person, he was horribly cold, closed within himself, unnervingly silent and unsociable to the degree that one might've been thinking that he was going out of his way just to make people annoyed with his lack of concern about that which was around him besides the mission at hand.
But now Kyuzo had no mission. Not yet anyway. With Kambei gone, there wasn't really a chance of re-mitigating their previously interrupted duel to the death that they had deemed to finish one day, and thus the only reason that Kyuzo was with the other samurai to begin with. So most likely, he, like some of the other veteran samurai, concluded that Kambei had gone to the capital, Miyako, and had opted to follow him. The sooner the war ended, the sooner he and Kambei could duel, he could kill him and then he could disappear all over again.
And so Kyuzo went on his way, almost robotic with his lack of emotion towards the entire matter, on his way to the capital. But to hope for a peaceful journey to the capital was supremely idiotic—not when the Nobuseri forces, whose prides had been so terribly wounded—were only too eager to go slay every samurai they came across with. The battle at Kanna Village had sparked a war, after all. And it had spread through the whole land like a brushfire.
Within days, Kyuzo was locked in combat again with the towering killing machines that blocked out the sun whenever their shadow passed. Great metal blades slammed down in repetitive impact upon the desert soil, missing him by inches, as guns went off left and right. He had run into a squadron of Nobuseri coming back from one of the villages, their prides wounded by being deflected by the samurai there. Ukyo's schemes were progressing—his order for all the ronin samurai to go to the different villages to defend them from the terrible Nobuseri was making all the bedlam necessary for the perfect haze that marked the onset of war.
Bullets rained down on him in torrents and after swift moves of his blades that deflected the lead away, his twin swords effectively sliced through the 'tea kettle' Nobuseri like they were made of paper. The 'spiders' shot down from above, shooting lasers with their single eyes, but Kyuzo had dealt with these before, although this time, he hadn't a skittish Water Maiden to protect. It was child's play to send his blade smashing through the red-globes that were their eyes and then effectively ripping through their entire chassis.
The bigger Nobuseri, on the other hand, made every attempt to crush the red-coated blond samurai, and effectively found that their size really didn't help when their opponent was as small as a gnat to them and moved around faster than cougars at a hunt. Kyuzo rammed his swords through the slimmer areas of their joints and sent broken pieces of metal and circuitry littering the desert floor. Explosions lit the sky as robot after robot fell at Kyuzo's well-used blades. Though many had fallen, the squadron still outnumbered Kyuzo, fourteen to one.
More spiders came down and shot relentlessly at Kyuzo with their lasers, forcing him to run from range and then leap up, slashing at another tea kettle before ducking against machine-gun fire of the large Nobuseri's guns. Those guns were the size of killer whales and every shot sent towers of sand flying at Kyuzo's face and caused the earth to shake and shift under his feet. This sort of battlefield was something he was no stranger to, but by this time, he'd been fighting for three days without food or even much water. It was taking its toll on him, but he was relentless, and ignored it.
He decided that it might have been time to think about those signs when he realized something he had not before—his swords were becoming worn and chipped. Every crack and chip in a sword meant the difference between victory and defeat and Kyuzo knew this even as he continued to batter away the bullets and slash through circuits.
His vision blurred for the slightest fraction of a second because of the sands. That was all it took for a bullet to manage a hit on his shoulder. But it was one bullet, and it would certainly take more than that to deter him. He fought on.
He didn't remember much of the rest of the fight—probably because he didn't really care much of it. He won, leaving behind twenty-five feet of broken Nobuseri carcass in the desert, and was walking on still towards the capital. He still had a long way to go. As he walked on, his feet began to drag, and his view became hazy. The sun was heartless as it poured terrible heat, and the wind was as unforgiving as more sand flew into his eyes.
He had no food, no water, and rather more hits than he realized. He took a mental count of how many he'd defeated. He lost count after fifty-eight. That was a feat, for a single samurai. Kyuzo was not impressed of himself. He decided his condition was pathetic. But as always, his wall of coldness and silence prevailed—he just kept going towards the capital without any thought.
He remembered seeing a forest glade at the time when his legs finally gave way and he fell unconscious.
Authors note: And this ends part one. The other character has not appeared yet. Yes. I know. Don't worry—I'll get around to it in chapter two. Please review, minna, and tell me how it is so far.