"You sure got a lot done today Yuka," Taiki marveled as they spread their new belongings out on the bed along with the things they already had packed and Yuka tried to figure out a way to make them all fit properly.

"It was a stroke of luck," Yuka replied absently.

The first shady merchant-vendor (which Yuka would have called a pawn-shop owner) she had come across had tried to cheat her of a fair weight in coin so Yuka had been forced to demonstrate a little of her ability to convince the man that she was not someone he wanted to mess with. He had very grudgingly told over the right amount of coinage for the three trinkets (a gold necklace, a tennis bracelet and a plain gold ring) that Yuka had worn in to sell. It was at that very pawn shop that Kaname had stumbled across a violin, still in its case, from their world.

:And now I know where all the socks that get lost in the dryer disappear to,: Yuka thought with wry humor.

The merchant had been reasonable about getting rid of the instrument since no-one he had ever encountered knew what it was or how to use it. They had an instrument that was a little bit (but really not very) similar called an nikon, it looked like an old fashioned erhu, that was a stringed instrument with a very long and thin neck and a base that was shaped more like a small drum. The instrument was set on the lap as the musician sat and played rather more like a violin that Yuka had come across was locked with a (rather cheap) combination lock on the case and it was clear that no-one on this world had dealt with such a strange mechanism or the even stranger (to them) materials that the case was made of for it was a thick, sturdy plastic case designed to travel well and weather all damage. The instrument itself, when she managed to finagle the lock open, was in very good shape. The wood was undamaged, the keys were intact, the bridge showed no sign of wear, the bowstrings still had all of their horsehair, and for a wonder the strings were all mostly intact. There were even extras along with some rosin in the case's "hidden" compartment. The penny pinching merchant still haggled with her, even over something he had no use for but Yuka talked him down to a reasonable price.

The remaining daylight had been spent rummaging through the nearby second-hand clothes market for suitable garments for the two of them to wear. It had been a bit of a trial, but they'd found articles that would do well. The weather was in the process of turning from early spring to summer, but even so it was still a tricky time of the year, it could be balmy one hour and then cold and pouring the next, necessitating that they have both cloaks and lighter clothes. The used clothing bins in the secondhand market were mostly picked through, but after looking at the sorry state of the people around her, Yuka realized she should not be terribly surprised. Tai was in a bad way. Not many people had much in the way of food or warm clothes, and those that did were less than willing to part with them. Much of what made it into the bins were a short step above kitchen rags; they had tears in inconvenient places, and stains on them and were patched as a quilt if they weren't already more hole than cloth.

:Poor kingdom,: Yuka thought, looking around her with pity.

There were youma wandering the streets even in broad daylight. It was bad. The blackguard, for all that they were as much an enemy of Tai as any of the yuoma were (or at least symptomatic of the troubles in the kingdom) at least did their job in the area of disposing of the overlarge pests.

:If we don't find that stupid king, Kaname's going to undergo shitsudou for sure!: Yuka thought worriedly.

They had to get moving, and quickly. Yuka had thought when she'd landed that she and he might stick around in town for another day or two to possibly get a better sense of the lay of the land but after having moved about in the small city for even one day, Yuka could see that delaying was the last thing they wanted to do. Every day they delayed was another day that the rightful king of Tai was not on his throne, doing his job. The gods that ruled this world might decide that they'd had enough of the situation and that her kirin friend was just going to have to undergo shitsudo in order for the massive disaster that was his ruler's reign to come to an end.

Later that evening, Kaname was figuring out how to cut and resew the clothes they had bought at the marketplace to fit them. They had purposely bought clothes that were three or four sizes too large because both of them were fortunately very tiny and it was easier to refit than make from new (new clothes would stand out anyway). Yuka was busy sorting and repacking their travel items into two smaller packs instead of one large one.

"Will we be ready to leave in the morning?" Taiki asked.

"I don't see why not," Yuka replied. "We've only paid for the one night anyway and we both want to get going as soon as possible if we're going to find... your friend."

After seeing so many black guards roaming about the streets that afternoon, by unspoken mutual consent they'd decided to forgo any mention of the word "king" or Gyousou's name. The object was to keep a low profile.

After the new clothes were mended and seamed and the travel-packs packed with an equal distribution of weight and belongings including splitting the food supply and water canteens, Yuka got started on giving her new instrument a thorough cleaning. After the detailed inspection Yuka restrung and tested the keys; an old violin she'd once had, had had a key that was forever loosening and slipping out of key, making her have to pause in the middle of her practice and retune the string. She was a bit surprised to find herself so pleased when she discovered that the instrument itself was sound and in surprisingly good condition.

:It's funny,: she thought to herself as she warmed her fingers and the instrument up with the usual exercises. :Back home I thought I hated this thing, but now it seems comforting, like an old friend.:

"Say!" Kaname said after hearing a short fast piece called Vivaldi's "Presto" from The Four Seasons. "You're really good!"

"I'm decent enough," she allowed with a small smile.

Kaname already knew something of how Yuka's father had determined that his daughter should be a nationally recognized concert violinist, and a child prodigy at that. Unfortunately for her, Yuka, while not tone deaf, wasn't the musical genius her father wanted either. She was always good, but no matter how she worked and practiced she was never quite great. She was good enough for second chair but when compared to a natural talent, that indefinable quality that made genius was somewhat lacking in her own playing. She could reproduce a peice cold, even add flourishes for a better sound, but sadly lacked the creative spark. Yuka was a technical player, with a very fine sense of the mathematics of a piece, but her appreciation was for technical perfection rather than something so unquantifiable as "beauty".

"I figured out something I can do, to help out along the way," Kaname said, pulling out a leather-bound portfolio with a number of loose sheets of paper and a small case of charcoal sticks. They were clearly from this world and not the other for the quality of the paper was not the same, being rougher with some flecks of plant pulp in them rather than the finely milled sheets that were created by machines on their world.

"If we stop in a good sized town, I can offer to make charcoal drawings of people just like people do at fairs and amusement parks on our world!"

It would be well to augment their supply of money as much as they could in case the rescue and information gathering mission went on longer than they intended or they had to look for him somewhere else. The jewelry she had brought along with her wouldn't last forever and there was always the chance that they might run into misfortune and loose some of it. That was one reason why Yuka had spent some money in purchasing the violin, that and the fact that they needed and easy cover story. Minstrels and players were known to travel just about anywhere, so seeing a wandering player would not cause too much curiosity about why they were traveling. She imagined that an artist might enjoy much the same freedom from being questioned.

"That's a good plan," Yuka said approvingly.

Kaname beamed at the praise, showing real spirit for the first time since she'd dumped him, ass over end, in this world. Yuka experienced the now-familiar sense of her conscience coming to plague her. Kaname was not the first boy she'd gotten embroiled in her own messes; Ikuya Asano, her boyfriend, would never have crossed over into their world if Yuka hadn't boldly insisted on tagging along.

:I wonder if Youko has found him yet or not,: Yuka mused to herself.

Probably not, for if she had, Yuka was pretty sure that Asano-kun would have been returned to the other world already. He wasn't there so he probably hadn't been found yet. Yuka tried not to spend too long staring at the dark ceiling that night after they went to bed wondering if they were really ready for this.

The former General Risai of the equally former Jou Provincial Army steadied herself against the side of her mount Hien and watched the valley below her intently. She had been months setting up this ambush, more specifically she had been months getting the correct intelligence in setting up this ambush. The former General Ansen of the Left Palace Guard, now pretender to the throne of Tai, had amassed himself an inconveniently large army. It was an army filled with the dregs of other societies, peoples whose home kingdoms would not take them in or who had skipped out for one reason or another. That was not to say that all of the soldiers were evil mercenaries (life couldn't possibly be that simple!) many of them were simply desperate people. Filling out the ranks of the foot-soldiers were farmers, fishermen and peasants of other kingdoms whose rulers had lost the Way and whose nations were going downhill. Risai had no idea why they would think that emigrating to youma-infested, frozen-over Tai was such a brilliant plan of action, but come they did.

:It probably has something to do with economic concerns,: Risai thought with a shake of her head.

Even if life in Tai was harsh, and the youma infested every corner of the land, the pay with Ansen's army was still good enough for a thrifty soldier to have a little bit to send home to his family. Soldiering was hard work, but if there was no other work available, a desperate man would risk his life on honest work if he was honest rather than shame his family by resorting to banditry. Not that there wasn't plenty of Banditry to go around...

:And the other half of Ansen's Army are all Foresworn,: Risai thought with a frown. She wondered what Ansen meant by employing them in his army, unless they were the ones who had helped put him on the throne in the first place.

She didn't like the look of them. They were a people who lived in Tai but who did not consider themselves citizens of Tai. In fact, they went out of thier way to make trouble for the kingdom and its citizens at every turn. They didn't even properly worship Tentei, but had thier own Gods! And they were fanatical in thier dsire to make bloodshed on thier gods behalves.

:When Gyousou-sama was on the throne, they were little more than a nuisance,: Risai thought as she watched a small contingent of Foresworn in their rough leather and fur armor escorting a messenger in a carriage. It was a high-ranked member of their society, summoned to the capitol by Ansen for an unknown reason. That messenger was carrying something important to Ansen's future plans.

:What those future plans are, even Eishou doesn't know,: Risai thought.

Out of Gyousou's loyal generals, only she and Gyousou had escaped the first purge of the military and any of the ones that followed after it. Since that time it had been five hard years on the run, ducking from village to town and hamlet, hiding, evading capture and somehow still managing to keep some small flame of rebellion alive. To do anything less would be to give up, and neither of them were willing to tip over the edge of despair. So, between the two of them, they'd kept of a small resistance. By mutual agreement it was something that was never a true, serious threat, more like a small annoyance. Their open rebellion was more of a distraction for their real quest, which was to gather as much information as they could and hopefully find their liege-lord and his kirin, wherever they might be.

It was constant game of cat and mouse because, while their rebel army might be a distraction, their attempts to perceive Ansen's ultimate plan were mixed at best. They didn't know where their king was, they didn't even have a hint. Their kirin might as well be on the moon for they knew. The castle, the court, and the countryside were all firmly under Ansen's control. Eishou had started what Risai could only think of as a youth program, but she didn't give very long odds of those "spies" of his hearing anything useful. Part of her thought he'd done it just to keep the kids out of trouble and let them live a little longer.

Risai, for her part, was sick of the constant hiding and sneaking around. She wanted to strike a blow against Ansen that he was going to feel. The information that that messenger was carrying was going to give her the means to do it. She was a warrior, not a spy, and it was time she took up her sword again!

"Now!" she yelled, signalling to the other rebels she had placed around the walls of the canyons.

The shoved down on the levers that would heave the boulders up out of the shallow hollows that Risan and the others had placed them in and the large rocks tumbled down the slopes, crushing and confusing the string of armed guards below them. The boulders were quickly followed by Risai and her rebel fighters. They rushed down the sides of the bottleneck and engaged the troops in a short but fierce pitched battle. Risai's heart sang as she took out the armed solders one by one, each time her blade met theirs and their bodies fell she could feel herself reclaimed a little of her own hope that perhaps all was not lost after all. In the way of battles it seems a few short moment later when all was still and a ragged cheer went up from her own fighters.

:A victory!: she exulted inwardly.

After so long a time of hiding like a rat in the woodwork of her own kingdom, she could at last straighten her spine and hold her head up. They had won!

Risai made her way over to the carriage to see what spoils she had gotten. If there was any more luck on her side, the messenger would not have committed suicide yet. She felt for the door of the carriage but it was stuck, so she wrenched at it, intent on tearing it open. To her surprise the entire side came off. Her eye widened at the sight of what was now obvious to her. It was not a carriage at all, but a cage! And it was empty, waiting for people to inhabit it.

"It's a trap!" she yelled out. "Scatter!"

Too late. Circling high up in the sky, so high that thier shadows would not fall on the world below, a host of Ansen's air troops swooped down to land higher above them on the canyon walls, bows strung and arrows aimed. Those who had listened to Risai's command and were running to the exits of the canyons were peirced with arrows.

"By order of Ansen, leader of the nation of Tai," the captain in the command of the air unit said. "You are commanded to throw down your weapons and surrender."

After all that successful time outwitting the clever former-general, it seemed that her time had at last run out.

:If I must go down, it shall be with a sword in my hands! Eishou, I leave you to carry on the fight!:

Risai, having nothing left to loose, and resigning herself to her fate, charged up to the nearest fighter, wanting to at least deal a blow against the enemy. Her world faded to black, quickly.

She never expected to wake again, but the jarring feeling of something being moved along the rough, uneven dirt and cobblestone roads that were what her kingdoms roads had devolved in the course of five harsh winters and springmelts without the constant care and supervision it took for the government to maintain them, woke her up. Her gaze was blurry at first, and her tongue at the back of her mouth felt thick and tasted sickly-sweet.

She sat up, ignoring the pounding in her head, and looked around her. She was inside the cage-wagon. A very small number of her comrades in arms were now her comrades in chains. The wagon was surrounded by Ansen's guard, with thier weapons pointed warrily at her.

"We're being taken to the capitol," Jakken, the sword-mate to her second (well, former) in command informed her. The familiar haggardness of loss and greif had worn his features in a matter of hours as her realized the loss of his lifemate.

"For execution?" Risai wondered.

She had honestly expected to die back there. Ansen had been hunting her for years, even since he had first made his coup. It made sense that he'd want er dead.

:But I suppose it make equal sense that he'd want to be there to witness my death himself.:

The man always had been one to gloat. That was one reason why, though he was talented with the ladies, Risai had never found him attractive even when they had been on good term under the command of King Gyousou (and even his predecessor).

:So this is it, this is how hope dies...: Risai thought numbly.

She'd at last been outwitted by him and there was nothing left for her but to pray that her death would be swift and that Eishou would somehow manage to succeed where she had failed. That he would somehow manage to find the king or Tai's Taiho and reclaim the kingdom.

:It's spring now, but it all seems like a far away dream. I will never see the Tai that I had hoped to make. I will never see this kingdom happy and prosperous as it could be, thriving under the care of a good, true king. It's all going to disappear someday. The youma will eat up every man, woman and child in the lands until there are no more to pray for another on the ribouku. The harsh winter winds will come down from the north and freeze everything over and they will never recede. Tai will become a frozen, unihabitable wasteland to which spring will never come. Tentei has forasken us, or forgotten us. We will never know happiness again...:

Risai knew it in her heart. It was the end. Tentei had forsaken them, there was no future for her kingdom. Tai was doomed.

Why the violin? It was never mentioned in the anime cannon, nor in any of the books, but looking at her in the anime, Yuka's posture was always insanely good. Better than Youko's, who had more of a slumped posture due to her timidity, like she's always waiting for the next blow to land. I toyed with the idea of having Yuka come from a traditional background or an old family but in the end just decided to leave it kind of open. There is one thing I am pretty certain of about her though from observation of her character. The girl has daddy issues, or more like a subscription lol. So that'll play a part in the story later, character development ahead.