Retribution
Chapter 3: Reminisces of a Samurai
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Author: Jun-I

Pairing: Kan/Kyuu
Summary: Kyuuzou recalls his life before S7. Where Kyuuzou got his nice red dress from :-)

Warnings and disclaimers: See first chapter.
Notes: The people Kyuuzou calls 'sisters' are not his legal sisters. They are his Sensei's older students. There is no love interest involving the women.


As Kyuuzou walked back to his employer's compound, the memory of that botched match played itself over and over in his head like a faulty video recording. He tried to push the image of Kanbei out of his head but it kept coming back - his face, his voice, his touch ... The red-eyed samurai wanted to kill Shimada Kanbei, but more than that, he needed to kill that nascent emotion that he could not, and would not name.

"It was just a stupid game that lowlifes like Shimada like to play." Kyuuzou told himself. "No need to think too much of it." But then why did the memory of that man's shameless declaration, his intense gaze, his hand on Kyuuzou's, and his breath against his face fill him with an indescribable dread? The angry androgyne strode past the guards at the doors of Ayamaro's mansion, ignoring their greetings. He was still lost in thought. "If Shimada Kanbei had not appeared, I would have remained as I was - untouchable, unfeeling and unperturbed. I worked hard for years to achieve this mental state, and in one day, he took it all away. How I detest this man!!!"

Kyuuzou saw Hyogo coming down the the corridor. Hyogo took one glance at Kyuuzou's wounded neck and grinned mockingly, but Kyuuzou disregarded the other man and walked past him resolutely before Hyogo could squeeze a word in. He was still fuming. "If my sisters were there," Kyuuzou thought, "they would have pulverized that ill-mannered Shimada for even daring to eye me so brazenly, not to mention for speaking those impertinent words and taking advantage of the situation to touch me inappropriately. But I don't need their help. I can finish this one on my own."

As Kyuuzou slid open the door to his room, it dawned on him that he neglected to take his prescription that morning. He was in such a hurry to go chase Kanbei, he forgot the antidepressants. "Little wonder my brain is trapped in this obsessive thought pattern!" Instead of checking his bleeding neck wound in the mirror, the samurai zoomed straight to the medicine bottle and popped twice the prescribed dose into his mouth. Just two years ago, Kyuuzou would not have considered taking mood-controlling medication, but Ayamaro had ordered his bodyguard to see the doctor after numerous complaints from other municipal employees about Kyuuzou's anger management issues. The doctor gave him a prescription which he would have thrown out if Ayamaro had not been so insistent that he follow the regimen. Anyway, it must have worked, for his colleagues did not seem as afraid to talk to him as they once were. Not that he cared. But at least Ayamaro was not getting anywhere near as many complaints about Kyuuzou as before.

At any rate, effective as the drugs were, Kyuuzou knew that they would take effect only after a number of hours. "If they worked as fast as I wanted, they would be illegal," he sighed. He would have to resort to mental gymnastics to keep Kanbei out of his mind until the medication kicked in.
Kyuuzou usually avoided thinking about the Great War, but at this moment, self-inflicted mental pain was preferable to letting his thoughts wander back to that dark warrior who had mastery of him, even if only for a brief moment. The silent samurai opened the gates of memory and allowed selected recollections to filter into his consciousness... During the war, he and his 'sisters' left Sensei to join the army. Haruko went first, followed by Mizuho and Ayame. Finally Kyuuzou joined them. At sixteen, Kyuuzou was the youngest of the four.

Ever since he came to live with them, he noticed the three 'sisters' would leave Sensei's mountain home once in a while, claiming that they were going to visit the parents of one of the girls. They would be gone for days at a time. Then Kyuuzou would hear rumors floating about town. Rumors of three masked fighters roaming the cities and countryside, skirmishing with marauding soldiers or rescuing kidnapped women from the private security forces of wealthy men. Kyuuzou had once asked if he could accompany his seniors on their trips down the mountain. They told him he couldn't come along, because it would not be 'convenient' to bring a boy to stay with their parents. And that they were planning to go kimono shopping, something which he presumably would not be interested in. The three females did not always come back to Kyuuzou with new clothes but Mizuho and Ayame sometimes returned with unexplained injuries. Though as time passed and the two younger female fighters became more experienced, such injuries became rarer. Kyuuzou had been jealous beyond words. The girls were getting to see all the action, testing their skills in the 'real world', and he was stuck at home waiting.

The fact that the three people closest to him lied to him over this one thing hurt him more than he wanted to admit. After all he had done to fit in with the girls, they still saw him as an outsider. But then, it was he who first deceived them, so perhaps he had no right to complain. If the women didn't want him in, it was fine by him! Women and their misguided 'save the world' mentality! He wanted no part in this foolishness! Sometimes the three fools created more problems than they solved, for they were not always around to 'save the day' when the cronies of villains they had slain returned to exact revenge on the hapless victims.

But whether he liked his 'sisters' or hated them, they were destined to remain together for at least a while longer. Their Sensei had insisted that the four of them try to stay in the same battalion so they could 'take care of one another'. Sensei seemed to think that the prejudices of comrades might be nearly as dangerous as the weapons of enemies. Of the four of Sensei's students, three were female, and Ayame and Mizuho were not from samurai families. Kyuuzou knew his class status was also somewhat ambiguous. His gender ambiguity was even more of a concern; Sensei and Haruko worried that his androgynous appearance might attract "the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of man". Since Kyuuzou had never at any point in his life heard them mention "the right kind of attention from the right kind of man", he had to conclude that such a thing simply did not exist. Speaking of "the wrong kind of attention from the wrong kind of man", wasn't that exactly what happened with Shimada Kanbei earlier in the day? Damnation! Why was he thinking about that man again?!!

Kyuuzou masterfully steered his thoughts back to the past. After joining the army, he realized that the women, particularly those from non-samurai classes, had to work twice as hard to gain the same recognition as the men. Not that his sisters and himself had much trouble with getting recognition. They outfought all the male samurai in the regiment. But Kyuuzou also noticed another thing - the samurai men seemed to accept Haruko more easily than they accepted him. After making a few flashy kills, the samurai woman was welcomed as "one of the guys." It seemed that a mannish woman was better than a girlish boy. Such was his fate - to be shut out from both the worlds of men and women. But it was his own decision to take the 'middle way'.

The crimson samurai had chosen a lonely road, but he had no regrets and blamed no one. And he was not the only one of the 'four sisters' to make a controversial choice. Mizuho decided to mechanize. "All to gain and nothing to lose," she said. Once Sensei learnt that Mizuho wanted to become a mecha warrior, she sent Mizu a letter telling her that mechanization was for cowards who did not have the courage to live as women. Mizuho was always the mildest of the three 'sisters', so Kyuuzou was surprised when she tore up the letter in a fit of rage, shouting, "Nobody, nobody, has the right to control what I can or cannot do with my body! Not even Sensei!" Then she stormed off. Kyuuzou tried to follow after her but Haruko stopped him and told him to let her be. Haruko then spoke of how Mizuho had an aunt who was forced into the harem of a rich man, and a cousin who was carried off by rampaging soldiers. So perhaps Mizuho did have reasons for wanting to exchange the body of a woman for the body of a machine.

Haruko seems to know a lot about other people's families' private matters, thought Kyuuzou. She was also the one who told Kyuuzou that his mother was born a samurai, and revealed to him his mother's family name. The young samurai always thought that his Sensei was too harsh in her judgment on Mizuho's choice. Just how different was Mizuho from Haruko who dressed as a man during her travels because it was 'safer that way'? Sensei never said anything about that. There was always a gaggle of village girls following after 'handsome Haru', and half of them remain undeterred even after learning she was really a woman. Haru was also the one who taught Kyuuzou to change his voice. She would drop her voice to a low register so she could pass for a man. Haruko trained Kyuuzou to develop a deeper speaking voice so that his 'masculinity' would not be 'challenged'; she said it was 'safer that way.'

Not that it mattered what anyone thought anymore. Once Mizuho converted to a mecha warrior, she had to transfer to a different regiment. Neither Ayame, Haruko nor Kyuuzou were present at the battle in which she was ... destroyed. Sometimes Kyuuzou still wondered if it would have made a difference even if they had been there. They were all mortals, beings of finite power. Of his three sisters, Mizuho was the one Kyuuzou liked the best, back in the day when he still knew how to 'like' people. Ayame was protective of him because of 'guilt', Haruko paid him attention for the sake of his mother, but Mizuho needed no reason to be kind to him. Why did it have to be her? But then she was not the first one to leave him...

Kyuuzou shook his head disgustedly to clear away the wave of self-pity. Mizuho died the way she wanted, in combat. She had always told him there were worse ways to die. It was just as well that she was no longer around. Kyuuzou was not sure if Mizuho would still like him if she had lived. She would have a fit if she knew what sort of establishment he worked for. Ayamaro she just might have barely tolerated, but Ukyo was another story... Kyuuzou was not sure how he managed to tolerate Ukyo either. Whenever the spoilt, ignorant brat declared how he hated mechanized samurai, Kyuuzou felt like slicing him to ribbons. But that would have gotten him fired, and a warrior needed to eat.

His two remaining sisters would probably not approve of his employment 'choice' either. But they too were not around to judge him. Haru stayed on Mount Keian to run Sensei's dojo. Ayame, having acquired a list of garment factory contacts from her textile merchant parents, went up north to start a job retraining-and-placement program for war veterans called "From Swords to Sewing Machines". Kyuuzou deliberately headed in a different direction - to Kougakyo, where he heard that wealthy merchants were hiring bodyguards.

The young samurai took no active measures to stay in touch with his two seniors. But he still felt obligated to reply to their letters once in a while. Ayame had sent Kyuuzou a care package by Turtle Express some months back - it contained a stylish long dress made by participants in the "From Swords to Sewing Machines" progam. With it was a letter offering to train Kyuuzou to be a seamstress if he moved to where Ayame lived. Kyuuzou liked the dress – he wore it everyday. Still, the scarlet samurai could not really see himself as a seamstress. Ayame also wanted him to introduce all the veterans he knew to her program. But Kyuuzou did not have much of a social circle; the only war veterans he had contact with all worked for Ayamaro. To pass them on to his sister would mean poaching from his employer. Whatever else one could say of Ayamaro, municipal employees during his administration had great health insurance - 100 percent prescription drug coverage, no copay needed. (Hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery, however, were not covered, much to Hyogo's disappointment.) And whatever else could be said of Kyuuzou, he was not beyond gratitude.

Kyuuzou was still carefully formulating a tactful response to Ayame's letter, because one wrong sentence could open the floodgates and bring on a tirade from her about "men and their foolish pride" and "have you noticed almost all the ronin are men, while most of the women veterans have already reintegrated?" (not that there were that many women veterans to start with, Kyuuzou wanted to say, but decided it was not a good idea to talk back to Ayame) and "just as well that you stupid men all starve to death or get yourselves killed in duels and then we women will take over the world and reproduce by cloning." Ayame's words could cut almost as sharply as her swords. As far as Kyuuzou knew, his sister wasn't on medication.

Over the course of the war, Third Sister's disposition had evolved from a near-constant state of irritability into a volcanic temperament given to occasional but vicious bouts of rage. Her conduct deteriorated even further after Mizuho died. It was almost as if Mizuho's restless, unhappy spirit had returned to rest with Ayame. Ayame was now carrying the rage and pain of two women, instead of just one. Kyuuzou suspected Third Sister started to relish killing, if only just to conquer the sense of powerlessness that came with loss. The red samurai sometimes feared her. Although the young man heard that she had calmed down somewhat after the war, he was still not keen on staying in touch. Even so, dealing with an explosive Ayame was still preferable to thinking of a sleazy Kanbei. Speaking of the letter, he would go write it right now.