Cedar
杉
(sugi)
"You are going to come with us."
Rumi paused and looked over her shoulder at the woman straddling the chair she sat upon, backwards. She had one arm draped over the back, while the other was lifted, the elbow propped on the edge of the chair so that she could lean her chin against her palm. One finger was tapping her cheek, just to the side of one of the long, curving tattoos etched into her skin. Dark brown, the line stood out warm and clear against the paleness of her skin. Purple hair was pulled into a high topknot on the top of her head, off her neck. It was a hot, sticky day, and the exhaust from all the starships around them was not making it any cooler. The woman had apparently settled herself in one of the cooler spots, a long stretch of shade provided by the hulk of the greenish light freighter behind her.
Zabrak were always so confident of themselves. Rumi trilled lightly through her noses. Arrogant.
She tried to pitch her voice lower, into something that would sound more menacing to a Zabrak when she responded. She wanted no trouble here, but the near falsetto tones of a mature Frenk female led too many to underestimate her, and not take her seriously. Killing those who couldn't take a hint was so terribly bothersome. She adjusted the strap holding her IQA-11 meaningfully, settling it afresh across her back and put a sneer into her voice. "What makes you think I will come with you?"
The Zabrak arched and eyebrow and smiled slowly. Then she shrugged and leaned back on her chair and looked up at the light freighter momentarily. "I have the best ship here. And this is the second time you have walked past. You're looking for a good ride. Mine is the best, so you will come with us."
Zabraks were so arrogant. Rumi trilled again, irritated, but looked the woman over a second time. There was a well maintained EE-3 blaster strapped to her thigh, and the holster was well worn as well as well oiled. She used her weapon frequently. This was not a woman to cross idly. The ship, too, sported laser cannons in the front, and the cheerfully violent image of a bloodthirsty Tooka doll on the nose suggested that this was not a ship for recreational transport. Rumi's blue eyes narrowed a bit. "You are a bounty hunter."
The Zabrak continued to smile, steadily. "So are you," she replied.
Rumi tilted her head and considered again, more thoughtfully this time. There were a fair number of women in the trade, but not nearly as many as men. For a humanoid, the Zabrak was likely considered fairly pretty, and in possession of a lilting, rich accent many males would find alluring. Perhaps she experienced similar difficulties with ignorant people? Arrogant as Zabrak were, it would perhaps not be so bad, working with someone in a situation not entirely different from her own. She trilled again, slowly, this time more thoughtful. Bounty hunters didn't usually take passengers for fun. Perhaps this woman was not underestimating her? If true, the respect was appreciated. "You are not offering passage. You are recruiting."
"I have a job lined up that would benefit from a sharpshooter," the woman replied, her head tilting towards the length of the blaster rifle on Rumi's back. "You any good?"
Rumi stiffened up to her fullest height, and her voice trilled high in indignation. "I am Rumi Paramita!"
The Zabrak merely smiled. "I know. Your reputation precedes you, even if your resume is a bit short."
Rumi bristled, but looked at the Zabrak woman's face and the warm, wry smile there. She huffed. "I have been a bounty hunter for a year. My resume's quality is unparalleled. It is only short because I am new."
"How would you like to build it up?"
Rumi looked at her again. She was swinging a leg off the chair to stand. Her shoulders were relaxed, her hands at her sides, within easy reach of her EE-3 but without any indication of violence. Confident, then. And experienced. And maybe not entirely different from herself. She stepped forward and peered down at the smaller being. Height was one of the advantages of being Frenk. Smaller beings were easily intimidated by those who were bigger, or at least taller. There was something inherently intimidating about having to crane your neck upward. This woman seemed unconcerned by tilting her head back to look Rumi in the eye.
She smiled a little, and let her voice be as delicately pitched as it was naturally. "I believe that I would."
The Zabrak grinned and stretched out a hand, and Rumi accepted it in hers as the smaller woman said, "My name is Sugi."
Seripas fidgeted, running his hands over each other again and again, looking up at the two towering beings above him. They were so big. And they were actually considering him! Him! Really! Finally!
"He did fix the engine," the one named Sugi said, sounding a little skeptical. It was, though, an admission of ability. Seripas pounced.
"I'm really good with mechanical things!" he enthused, looking around the engine room of the Halo. It was a beautiful ship, really. Old, but one of those well built ships that could fly forever if it had a good engineer on board, and whoever was the mechanic in here left such a mess it was a pity, and if he had just a few good hours and a good hydrospanner, he could fix it up and get it up to .5 hyperspeed in no time! Great ship, good bones in it, it just needed a little work on its heart. "Give me a day or maybe two and I get make some improvements, I'll get you up to .5, you'll be able to outrun most of the Republic Venator class ships, and I can make some improvements to the reclamation systems, a lot of people forget how important those are until the water and air start going bad, all they want is weapons, but I'm good with weapons too! And miniaturizing them, I can make some improvements to your forward and aft laser cannons that will –"
The Kyuzo made a string of words that sounded gruff and irritated, and Seripas immediately halted his string of verbiage. He talked too much when he was nervous, he really did, but he was so excited, this was really his chance to get out there. He really, really wanted more than the life of a dirtside mechanic. He could do so much more, he was sure of it, if someone would just give him the chance. He couldn't work alone, he knew, because he was so small and people always discounted him, and probably wouldn't give him work, but he could fight! He could! His mobile suit was proof of that. He could smash walls and blow holes in buildings, and that was just in the prototype. There were just some kinks to work out. He was already designing an improved model. It was going to have a vocalizer. He'd sound almost demonic. Maybe he should throw in glowing eyes? That would be awesome.
Sugi sighed and shook her head. "I appreciate you fixing the engine, Seripas, and we will pay you for your services, but you are not quite what we are looking for as a mechanic."
His headstems drooped a little as he curled around himself. It really looked for a moment like they might consider him. The Kyuzo said something else, in a tone that was slightly brighter, even though it was still gruff. Seripas wound his hands around each other. He wanted to get out of this place. To leave. To do something with his life that wasn't just fixing ships that came in to dock.
"I'm small," he admitted, "And I don't look like bounty hunter material, I know, but I can repair this ship so that it flies for decades. And I've got some skills you don't know about, and nobody knows about yet. If you won't take me with you, I'll find someone else. I might not get famous as a bounty hunter, but I'll do good work and take care of someone else's ship." He screwed up his courage and looked up again, into the faces of the two towering people above him, who were so nice, even if they were so skeptical. "And you'll regret not taking me instead!"
The Kyuzo, Embo, made a low sound that was probably a sigh, then rattled off another string of words at Sugi. Sugi had a brow arched, and her arms folded across her chest, and replied to Embo's words. "He's got spirit."
Seripas caught his breath. "I can knock down walls with a fist, and shoot a three inch target at two hundred meters."
Embo just stared down at him, but Sugi laughed, low and deep. "With what weapon?"
Seripas looked up at her and grinned, a little timidly. "I have a mecha suit. I designed it and made it myself. There's not another like it in the galaxy. I don't have to be tiny."
Embo started making a rather disturbing noise, and Seripas flinched before realizing the Kyuzo was laughing. He said a few more words, and Sugi laughed again before turning back down to Seripas. "We will take you on, little man. We leave at 0500 tomorrow morning. Get your suit and bring it with you. We will not wait."
He thought he would die with joy. No more dirtside. No more underpaid mechanic. He was going to have a life, a big life, a life outside of merely fixing things. They were giving him his chance.
The galaxy opened up before him.
The great branches of the tree blotted out the rain, though they did not block it fully.
Iridonia was a violent world, and its beauty was a harsh one. The tree survived somehow, clinging to the earth by its thick roots and burrowing into the clumpy dirt. It leaned over the edge of the narrow ravine they lay in.
The girl was, be supposed, a little bit more than a girl, but still too green for him to want to properly call her a woman. Even so, it was her hauling him out of the valley where the massacre took place that kept him alive. Kriffing Iridonians. They paid well, but all they did was fight, with others, with each other. This particular skirmish was between two local tribes laying claim to the same valley full of these blasted, thick trunked-trees. The man who hired him was babbling something about sacred land and sacred trees and sacred buildings and sacred something-or-other.
"You're a mercenary," the not-quite-woman said, and Embo rolled his head to one side to look at her. Her hair was long and purple and matted, and the strands that escaped her braid were clinging to her face, tangled around the delicate horns native to her species. Her brown eyes were clever, he decided. Even smeared with blood, one eye squinted at him brightly. There was a pair of thin cuts slicing down her brow, now crusted over.
"E chu ta," he replied. She didn't need to drag him out of the valley, even if his leg was broken. Hurt like hell, too.
He felt a hand smack him in the head, and it slapped wetly from all the rainwater clinging to her palm and his face. "I didn't need to save your sorry ass. The village is two kilometers from here. They will set your leg."
"Keh," he snorted in reply. Her village paid for him, they fought on the same side, but who was he to her? Why drag him out of that nightmare instead of one of the other Zabrak? She wanted something from him, and he was not inclined to give it. If she thought saving him would indebt him to her, she was wrong. Life was cheap, including his.
The other village laid a trap. Apparently they were less interested in preserving the big trees than simply destroying their enemies, and had piled explosives into the roots, detonating them as Embo and his group of villagers had moved through. The place turned into an inferno of wood-shrapnel and fire, and then shortly after, the enemy had come screaming down into the valley, turning blasters upon the survivors as they whooped war cries. Several minutes into the encounter, he saw the not-quite-woman fling herself at one of the pilots of a swoopbike, break his neck with her hands, fling him off and take it, using it for a time before it was shot out beneath her.
She was a crazy not-quite-woman, he decided. A violent not-quite-woman. But then, she was an Iridonian Zabrak, and none of them were right in the head. Her tattoos were fresh on her face; perhaps she thought she was proving something, now that she was an adult?
"You are an ungrateful bastard," the not-quite-woman told him, and he told her to kark off again. She reached out and smacked him in the head again, and he was too tired to bother blocking her. At least, that's what he told himself. She was fast with her slap, even exhausted as she must be.
They lay under the canopy of the tree, and looked up through its branches. It was grey above them, and the clouds durasteel colored. The tree, too, was grey from the dim lighting, though he knew it must be made of green branches and brown wood, like those in the valley before it became hell.
He breathed heavily, trying to rest and ignore the throbbing in his left leg. He couldn't tell how bad it was, just that it hurt severely. He hoped too much dirt wouldn't get into it. If she was going to insist on being a hero, then he might as well accept he was going to live and heal properly. Having a limp would be irritating.
"The trees are sacred, here. It's one of the few places they grow thickly. The soil is not hospitable most places on the planet."
What was she rambling about now? Embo turned his head to see her looking up at the branches above them. Laying on the slope of the ravine, it towered above them hugely.
"My mother told me about them when I was a little girl. They're called cedar in Basic, but in old Zabraki, they are called sugi. Before people moved to the stars, they were for purification rituals. Shrines were built out of their wood, and incense out of their resin, and they were homes to ancestor spirits. They cared for peoples souls." The not-quite-woman frowned upward, and Embo watched her. She was a crazy-not-quite woman, maybe, but perhaps she was crazy like the augurs at home on Phatrong, who spoke with spirits and saw portents in the flights of birds. They were crazy people, but they saw the world the way it was seen a millennia ago, so they were respected crazy people, and feared crazy people, and wise crazy people.
"I do not believe in ancestor spirits, because when you're dead, you're dead, but it was still a very bad thing they did." She frowned. "I played there when I was a girl, and my mother told me these things so I would understand."
He had to ask. "Understand what?"
The not-quite-woman turned her head towards him with a frown. "I don't understand Kyuzoni, but you just asked a question, didn't you?"
He nodded.
She hummed a bit, and Embo regarded her. She had a nice voice. It was feminine, but with a deep timbre. She would sing well. But then, she already seemed to be a storyteller, so perhaps she did sing. She would sing battle songs, and epics of heroes long dead. That was the kind of voice she had.
"My name is Sugi," she said.
They killed her childhood friends, her name givers. They tore up her roots. Embo swore. That was a deep evil. No wonder she was a crazy woman.
"You travel the stars, don't you?"
He looked at her again, nodded once. A rootless woman would not be tied to one place. That would be what she wanted from him.
"I want to travel the stars too," she said. He expected her to say more, but she didn't. He expected her to ask him to take her with him, or for him to train her, or for him to help her somehow, but she did not.
There were no trees like the sugi on Phatrong. There were giant ferns shaped like fans, and dense jungle rather than rare old-growth forests. Spirits dwelled in temples made of stone and mortar, not little shrines made from trees. He was as different from her as night was from day, because she took after her name-givers. Still, he had not felt so clean in many years, even though he hurt and lay in the Iridonian mud. No one had told him a story since he was a boy, the way she told him about her name-givers. She said the sugi housed souls, tended to them, purified them.
He felt like that now, as unlikely as it was.
"Suugiee," he said thickly, accented, and she looked at him.
"What?"
He laughed once, then looked up at the branches again. Somehow, he did not think he would be alone when he left this world.
Perhaps that would not be so bad.
The valley stretched out below them, more green and verdant than anywhere else she had ever seen. The wind caught in the branches and leaves, and carried a sweet smell up to them, the perfume of the forest.
Mama's arms were around her, and she tried to sit quietly while her mother talked, but sitting still was never her favorite thing. Mama's arms were covered in sweeping black tattoos and chiming bracelets made of clear glass and rainbow-light. Mama's chin rested on top of her head, but delicately, lightly. Her scalp was tender these past few weeks; her horns were coming in, breaking the skin. She was entering adolescence, and soon she would be able to complain she was too big to sit on her mother's lap when Mama wanted to talk. Mama's arms draped over her thin shoulders, pulling her into an embrace.
"You will be a soul-tender too," she said warmly. "That is why I named you Sugi."
Sugi frowned and made a face. "I don't want to be a soul-tender. I want to go to the stars and fight like the great warriors."
Mama laughed and kissed the top of her head. Sugi squirmed in embarrassment. "Mama," she groaned. "I am getting horns!"
Mama placed a hand on her head and ruffled her unruly hair. "You do not have to stay on Iridonia to be a soul-tender. You can be the biggest, baddest fighter in the galaxy. It is why you fight that determines who you are, Sugi. Not the fact that you fight. Fight with honor and you will not only be a hero, you will protect people. That is also why I named you Sugi. The trees are strong, to survive our world."
Sugi harrumped, then squirmed out of her mother's grip. "I have practice." She liked practice. She was good at combat, at fighting. No one fought Sugi of the Trees and won. At least, no one under eleven. She was first ranked in her age cohort. Iridonia's harsh terrain caused heavy competition for the sparse resources it offered. Those who fought well survived. Those who fought well and were smart either became tribal leaders or went off-world.
Sugi intended to be one of those who left. She would make her mark on the galaxy, not just Iridonia. Her dreams were as big as the night sky. The trees were rooted in the past. The stars were the future.
She beat at her at pants to free any dirt that might be clinging to them from sitting on the ground. Mama was looking up at her, squinting a little from the bright sunlight. "Go and learn to fight," Mama said.
She nodded once, turning to leave. After a step, though, she paused and looked back. The wind blew her hair out in a violet stream behind her head, and it rustled through the shivering branches of the great trees. They stretched wide and tall, the fragrant green branches. They stretched their arms towards the sky.
Maybe she would grow to fit her name, someday. Her feet would be on the ground, her arms would stretch towards the sky, tall and strong and sheltering.
Like the cedars.
She turned, and took the memory of trees with her.
The word 'sugi' means 'cedar' in Japanese, and considering that Sugi and her team debuted in an episode dedicated to the famous Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, I'm assuming this was intentional. Also, there are several hat tips towards the dearly departed scifi series Firefly in here. If you've seen Firefly, I'm sure you know which they are. Sugi and her team have always reminded me of that show - not quite on the right side of the law, but good people nonetheless.
Hope you all enjoyed.
~Queen