Notes:
Kyuuzou is 12 in this chapter. He had been studying with his Sensei for about two years. Ayame is 15, Mizuho is 19 and Haruko is 27. (same age as Kanbei in the Retribution universe) This is not Kyuuzou's first 'battle'. He had killed before. See Chapter 10 of Retribution.
Summary: Young Kyuuzou's first real battle does not go as well as he hoped.
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Kyuuzou 1st Person:
Mizuho senpai had been making trips away from Mount Kei'an often over the past two months. Sometimes Second Sister was leave for a week at a time, sometimes only for a couple of days. I knew, as before, that after Mizuho's intelligence gathering was done, my three senpai would disappear together again. So I watched my seniors carefully day after day. This time, I would go with them, whether they wanted my company or not.
One morning, three of them left the house just before dawn. I followed my sisters when they went down the mountain. If they sensed my presence, they gave no indication of it. But I was sure they did not know that I was there. I had already figured out their hearing range and made sure I stayed beyond it. For a long, long time they walked, keeping among the forest trees. No one could see us from the road. My legs were shorter than theirs but I managed not to lose track of my seniors. Hunger was beginning to gnaw at my insides, but my sisters were not stopping. I had brought some food from the kitchen with me. So I comforted myself with the thought that I would get to eat, sooner or later.
The senior students halted when they came to the cliff overlooking Kuroki Village. I stopped a safe distance behind them, keeping myself hidden behind a big rock. My sisters pull masks over their faces, then they sat down and waited in complete silence. For a while, nothing happened.
I was about to quietly help myself to the rice cake I took from the kitchen when they all dropped to the ground. Seeing my seniors' attention fully focused on what lay ahead, I became bolder and approached behind them, close enough to hear their low voices.
"My sources say this mechanized unit is the 3rd platoon of the 25th battalion.." Mizuho whispered, "They razed Iwase Village on their last tour... Were never disciplined for it. A few low-ranking officers and privates were court-martialed for abusing civilians. But in actuality, the whole platoon was involved. Yet no one ranking higher than sergeant was charged. Eventually, the charges were all dismissed because of 'lack of evidence' ... people were too terrified to testify. The platoon leader, a Red Spider with the rank of lieutenant, was never charged. I would guess the problem lies higher up, beyond the platoon level."
"Unfortunately, we'll have to save 'higher up' for another day." Haruko said grimly. "Or perhaps that is a job for a better-placed cell."
"It begins." whispered Ayame. I heard the screams of terrified people. I crept closer to the cliff edge, climbing onto a boulder so that I could see what my sisters were seeing. Those mechas that my sisters called tea kettles were flying over the heads of fleeing villagers, firing their guns. People were falling left and right.
"Hurry! We have to do something!" My youngest senpai hissed. "Can we attack now?"
Haruko sounded surprisingly unmoved, "We are three against many. Wait for an opening."
More people fell. I glanced once more at my senpai. Ayame did not seem as calm as Haruko. I could tell, from Third Sister's slightly shaking shoulders, that she was upset. I too might have been trembling at the sight of the Yakans chasing after the fleeing peasant women. One of the machines stretched out its arm to grab a woman with pale pink hair. The villager, finding herself suddenly lifted 3 feet off the ground, screamed with terror.
It was then I noticed the Mizuho was gone. She was not with Haruko and Ayame anymore. Where was Second Sister? As the Yakan moved away from the main body of its comrades, carrying the pink-haired woman with him, a few arrows hissed out of nowhere. The Yakan lost its levity.
"Good job, Mizu!" Haruko heaved a sigh of relief when the Yakan hit the ground and the peasant fell beside it, stunned but alive.
Then she turned to Third Sister. "Now, Ayame, find your position. Can you shoot that man without injuring the woman?"
Third Sister left First Siste, scampering nimbly along the edge of the cliff to find a new position. I turned my eyes in the direction where Ayame's bow was trained. A Yakan pilot had gotten out of his tea kettle and wrested a peasant woman to the ground. The peasant struggled. I saw Ayame's bow hand tremble. I heard the twang of the bow, the whistle of the arrow flying through the air to find its mark. Ayame's arrow Went right through the Yakan pilot. The man collapsed. But the peasant woman also stopped moving.
"Did I...?" Ayame turned towards Haruko. My 15-year-old sister's eyes were wide with horror.
"We'll know later," Haruko drew her own bow. "Keep shooting."
My sisters' arrows whizzed left and right. Yakans fell one after another. Now their leader, a Red Spider, turned its head in our direction. I felt a creeping sense of terror.
"Scatter!" commanded Haruko. Both she and Ayame zipped off in opposite directions and took cover behind boulders. I wondered where Mizuho was. At that moment, the Red Spider turned its attention back to the village. Two Mimizuku had suddenly collapsed, struck at their knees by rather large shuriken. I had seen Mizuho practicing with them before. She said they were designed to cut mecha. "So Second Sister has already gone ahead into the village," I looked in vain for her amidst the chaos below.
Now the remaining Mimizuku and Yakans were regrouping in a tight circle, wary of their unseen enemy.
"Shadow-person, show yourself!" the Red Spider raised its giant sword over a farmhouse. "Or I'll crush this village, right now."
I was expecting Mizuho to come out into the open, but instead, it was Haruko who appeared before the Red Spider. I watched the tall masked figure make that death-defying leap off the cliff, landing lightly in a crouch before the giant robot. Haru now raised herself to her full height. Such was my Big Sister. Tall, strong, skilled and very mannishly handsome. A woman who was a prince among men. What would I have given to be like her?
"You did not do all of that," the Red Spider remarked, looking at the warrior with the blue-black hair. "There is more than one shadow."
Haruko said, "I am no shadow. I work for no clan."
"Not a ninja?" the mecha warrior asked, curious. "But you move like one."
"Why do you attack the defenseless?" my senpai's voice was calm and clear as the mountain lake. "Is this how a war is fought? Who gave you your orders?"
It was then I noticed that Third Sister too, had disappeared. Ayame was no longer behind the boulder. Where was she? I quickly crept to the edge of the cliff and peered down at the village below.
The Red Spider did not answer Haruko's question. Instead, it asked her in return, "And who sent you? Are you a samurai?"
"I may be a samurai, but I do not stand here as a samurai." Big Sister spoke coolly as she looked upon the Red Spider without fear.
"Then what kind of warrior stands before me?" the Red Spider asked.
"A wolf," My senpai said simply, as the remaining Yakan and Mimizuku were closing in around her. What was Haruko doing? This was madness!
"A wolf, you say. Then you hold a foolish cause higher than loyalty to your lord." The Red Spider was scornful "I thought your kind died out a long time ago. Beasts without honor, without rules, unfit to be called warriors. It is a disgrace that the daughters of samurai had been known to join them."
"So I take it that it is in accordance to the honor and rules of samurai to ill-use innocent women, men and children and slaughter them?" Haruko's voice was cutting.
The Red Spider's answer was a roar of rage. It raised its sword over my eldest senpai. "They are not innocents! They were supplying our enemies with rice!"
"Is that so?" Haruko's tone was sarcastic. "If you have any real courage, take it up with the enemy samurai instead of letting your men ravage defenseless village women! Shame on you! You have sunk so low one would think that none of you were born of human mothers."
"Why is Big Sister talking reason with a monster?" I was sick with fear. "That thing is about to kill her!"
The robot roared and brought its sword down. Small as I was, I could not stand by and let it crush senpai. Drawing my swords, I jumped off the cliff before the mecha's giant cutter hit the ground. I landed on the Red Spider's head, slashed madly at it, but my swords clattered ineffectively against the thick metal skull.
The giant sword still crashed down at the spot where Haru was standing, but she stepped aside at the last possible moment. The force of the blow made a great cloud of dust next to her, but my eldest senpai did not flinch. Now Haru drew her twin blades.
I struck the Red Spider once more. It shook me off as an ox would shake off a fly. Not reacting fast enough to cushion my fall with a roll, I hit my head on the ground when I landed. Stunned, unaware of anything except the white lights dancing before my eyes, I did not see the Mimizuku pointing its gun at me until Ayame rushed over and cut it down. Where did she come from?
Then Third Sister was slashing swiftly through one Mimizuku after another. They did not even have time to fire. To my young eyes then, my third senpai was a goddess of speed.
As I struggled to sit up. the Red Spider fall to the ground, its waist joint cut by Mizuho's twin swords. Second Sister had attacked it from the back while Haruko took an opening from the front, chopping off its cannon arm.
"How dare you! Two against one!" the Red Spider snarled defiantly even as it looked Haruko in the eye and saw its death written there.
"Wolves hunt in packs," Mizuho sliced into the Red Spider's other knee.
"A sneak attack! Where is your warrior's honor?" the machine croaked.
"We do not fight for 'honor'. We fight for life." Haruko scaled mecha's shoulder in two quick steps and decapitated it. Mizuho and Haruko then ran over to aid my third senpai, locked in battle with the smaller mecha.
"Kill them all!" My oldest senpai commanded. "No one survives to bring a report back to base!"
Mecha were running amok around me. Just as I tried to get to my feet, a Mimizuku stepped on my thigh and ran on heedlessly. I almost shrieked from the pain but I bit my scream in. By the time I managed to stand, my sisters had finished with their work. Mizuho threw one of her swords at the last fleeing soldier, a Mimizuku. Second Sister's blade pierced the mecha cleanly through the back. Then she chased up to the fallen mecha, planted her foot firmly on its back and pulled her sword out.
My eyes turned to Third Sister. Ayame was kneeling before the peasant woman whom she accidentally killed earlier. Ayame had been trying to save the village woman. The dark girl's shoulders were bent in an attitude of abject despair. I noticed her left arm was bleeding.
"You are quite competent at killing," Surveying the scene, Haruko pronounced her assessment of Ayame's performance impassively. "But you don't yet have the skill to preserve life. Get up! Your grief will not raise the dead."
Ayame obediently rose to her feet. But she was not done yet. She started hacking at the body of the dead Yakan pilot with a mad vehemence. Blood and bits of flesh were flying everywhere. I saw the crazed look in Ayame's golden eyes. Her features were contorted in a twisted grin but she looked like she was about to cry.
"Enough!" Haruko told her curtly. "Save your energy for more useful actions."
Third Sister stopped her chopping. Then she declared. "Oh, he deserved it. Now I feel better!"
In that instant, the maniacal grin faded from Ayame's face, replaced by a calm mask. I do not know when I started to fear her. Perhaps I already feared her the first day I saw her.
I limped over to Haruko. "Senpai..." I began. She turned and backhanded me in the face, sending me flying into the dirt a second time. I looked up at my eldest senpai, ashamed.
"Child, who told you to follow us?! You think this is a game?" Haruko said sternly. "You already died 10 times today. It's a miracle you are still breathing! On top of nearly getting yourself killed, you almost screwed up our operation. We too could have died because of your stupidity!"
I scrambled to my knees and bowed before her, tasting the blood in my mouth. Did one of my teeth come loose at her blow? Mizuho came over to me. "Imoto-chan, are you hurt?" she sounded concerned.
"A Mimizuku stepped on my leg." I said.
Second Sister squatted down. "Get on my back. I'll carry you home."
I had put my arms around Mizuho's neck when Haruko said coldly, "No! Don't even offer a hand to help him up. His leg is clearly not broken. If he can come here by himself, he can walk back to Sensei's without help."
A sorrow and anger rose within me. I did what I did because I wanted to 'save' Big Sister. It was my first time fighting a mecha. So maybe nothing I did was useful. But a small word of acknowledgement would have made me glad. I was once again reminded that I am never good enough for these people. No matter how hard I tried, I'm always too stupid and too slow, too careless and too unfocused.
I released my hold on Second Sister. Before she rose to her feet, Mizuho whispered to me the only words of comfort I would hear about that day. "For big mecha, target their joints, the areas where metal plates come together. Attacking the armored parts is a waste of energy."
Ayame spoke. "Let's take their guns. We could use them. It would improve our odds. We could kill more of them, and faster."
"No," Big Sister said firmly, "Once we commit a 'property crime', they will be hot on our trail. And the loot will make us more traceable. Retrieve all our projectile weapons, and move out quickly!"
I limped around, helping my sisters retrieve their arrows and throwing stars. Ayame came up beside me. "Idiot!" she hissed. "What are you doing showing your face? You'll get us exposed."
Third Sister pulled out her handkerchief. The same one she used to clean her swords after hacking at the dead Yakan pilot. She quickly tied the bloody cloth around my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. I nearly gagged at the smell of grease and blood so close to my nose. It was a good thing I did not eat the rice cake earlier.
A few surviving peasants slowly emerged from hiding, looking at us nervously. Finally, the peasant woman with pink hair approached Mizuho. "Thank you for saving us, o-samurai-sama."
"I'm not a samurai," Second Sister replied humbly. "I am a peasant like you."
"She's a peasant?" a murmur arose from the villagers. More survivors came out of hiding to look with wonder upon their masked champion.
"Why did you help us?" an old man finally asked, his voice laced with suspicion. My Second Sister answered through her mask. "Because what happened to you could happen to anyone, us included, anytime. We are not fighting for glory, or for honor, or to live by some abstract code of conduct. We fight because we want the world to be a place we can all live in."
Then the people came closer and gathered around us. They began prostrating themselves. "Thank you for saving our village, good people." they wept. Ayame hung her head with shame.
"Please don't do this." Mizuho said to the peasants. "Please rise."
They continued to kneel and weep. It was Haruko's authoritative voice that cut through the sobs and murmurs. "We only postponed the total destruction of your village. How long would it be before the army sends more samurai to follow up on the fate of this platoon? It is probably in your interest to abandon this place and disperse yourselves among distant villages."
"But this is our home!" the villagers wept. "We have nowhere else to go! Can you not save us?"
"We can obliterate one platoon, but not an entire war machine." Haruko sounded almost sad.
We left the village as quickly as we could. I knew my sisters were walking a little slower so that I could keep up, although Big Sister did not even spare me a backward glance. Her words still echoed in my head. I never before realized that the strongest fighters could be so powerless.
Once we were in the cover of the forest, I pulled that filthy handkerchief off my face and gave it back to Ayame. She shot me a withering look but she did not force me to wear it again. We walked in silence for a long time. I finally mustered up the courage to speak. "When I become a very good fighter, as good as my honorable sisters, can I come with you?"
"No." Haruko said flatly.
"Please, but why?" I pushed my luck a little further. Big Sister might twist my ears painfully or strike me again, but I had wanted to ask this question for a very long time.
"Because you're a boy." Third Sister was the one who replied. "There are some things that girls have to do without boys watching, like going to the toilet."
"But this is not like going to the toilet." I insisted. "And I'm safe. I'm not really a boy, right?"
They did not respond. But I could guess what their answer was. I would not fully be a man but I could never grow into a woman either.
"You could pretend I am a girl. I look like one, right?" I persisted.
Again, there was only silence to greet me. I heard Haruko sigh. Finally, Mizuho answered me. "It's our old tradition. It was handed down to us from those before us. And to those before us from those before them. They must have their reasons. We cannot change this tradition."
Ayame added. "Sensei will be displeased to know you were disobedient and followed us. And she will be angry with us for letting you come along."
My apprehension mounted. "You won't tell Sensei, will you?" I could not afford to be driven out of the dojo a second time!
Haruko turned around. Her coal black eyes were cold and uncompromising. "Swear by Heaven and Earth that you will never follow us again. And then we will not speak of this to Sensei."
I was silent for a while. Then I swore the oath. Because I realized they would never change their mind no matter how much I want to 'help' them. I was allowed to stay in an all-female dojo, but still, I was barred from the secret world of the sisterhood whose name we can't even speak. I had done all I could so that my seniors could accept me, only to realize the gate to the courtyard had opened for me, but not the door to the house. Somehow, that knowledge filled me with a slow, corrosive pain. To be not quite an insider and yet not quite an outsider. Suspended in a nameless state. Not knowing where I belong or where I should stand. But maybe this is my fate.
That must have been the day I realized that the only person I could belong with is me. "Wolves hunt in packs." Mizuho had said. But I am not a wolf. I had no pack. For all their sorrows, my wolf-sisters still had each other. I had no one.
So be it then! They made me swear I would not follow them. That means I don't have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders like they do. They can cry for others but I only need to be loyal to me. Of us four, I alone will have the freedom to be uncaring.
