Chapter ten
Kuukaku sat down heavily at one of the tables.
"I want a beer!" she yelled and several of the waitresses jumped looking over at the young fireworks master with the false limb.
"Coming right up, Lady Kuukaku!" One of the braver waitresses cried as she made her way towards the kitchen.
Kuukaku grumbled a little bit as she used her good arm to take out her pipe and lit it. She inhaled, making the embers at the end of it glow brighter, and exhaled with a sigh. It had been a long day for the eldest Shiba. Dealing with her younger brother was always a trial for her, but doing so when his pride had been wounded was always annoying beyond belief. He had spent all day loafing around, sulking, no matter how many times she kicked him in the back.
She had tried to weasel what had happened out of him, but the only thing that she was able to get was that it had happened in the next town over while he was gallivanting around with his stupid friends while riding his fat pig. Kuukaku rolled her eyes and scowled, pushing out another breath and the tendrils of smoke swirled around her terrifying the townspeople even more.
"Here you are Lady Kuukaku!"
The waitress had finally come back with her alcohol and as soon as the younger girl had placed the sizable pint down onto the table, Kuukaku had picked it up and drained a large portion of it. Thankfully, the establish was well used to the odd habits of the local fireworks woman, even if the customers were less so, and the waitress simply went to the back to get another beer ready. It seemed that the Lady Shiba was not in a good mood. They might even have to contact her two assistants, Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko, to help drag the soon-to-be drunk out of her without making too much of a fuss.
"Starting in early are you?"
"Hahh?" Kuukaku sounded rudely as she stopped chugging her booze to glare at the one that had decided to disturb her when she was in one of her moods. She startled when she realized who was sitting in front of her.
"Tanaka?" Kuukaku asked, sipping at her nearly completed beer. "Yukimaru Tanaka?"
"The one and the same," the blacksmith grinned as he sat down across from her, slamming his own beer down on the table in front of him.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Kuukaku asked rudely, although notably not as rudely as she would have to most. The regulars and the staff realized this and went back to what they were doing, having been startled when Tanaka had decided to poke a ticking time bomb with a lit match. However, Tanaka just shrugged and took a gulp of his drink.
"It was a long day," Tanaka explained. "You know, with the festival and all. I decided to take a break."
"Oh, yeah?" Kuukaku said, her tone curious as she raised an eyebrow. "How did you do on the first day?"
"Not bad," Tanaka replied with a ridiculous smile on his face making Kuukaku think that he had done better than Tanaka was letting on. "I just came here to wind down, my son's been sulking up a storm, and as hilarious as that can be for the first twenty minutes, it gets a little tiring after you here the sixtieth sigh."
"Really?" Kuukaku asked, thinking on her own problems with her brother. "What set him off?"
Tanaka chuckled a little into his glass before answering.
"Oh, the usual," Tanaka told her. "Chojiro tried to perform with his friends for the festival, but someone else attracted all of the crowds away with something better."
Kuukaku laughed at the thought of Tanaka's stupid lump of a son actually doing something interesting or useful.
"Who was the guy?"
"That was what actually made the whole thing even better," Tanaka said, his grin wider than ever. "It turns out that the kid I hired to help me out during the festival was the one that made a killing doing some puppet show that drove everyone wild. He's pretty handy to have around too."
Kuukaku gave Tanaka a blank stare at this, feeling a disgusted sigh working its way up from the back of her throat.
"Puppets?" Kuukaku asked incredulously. "That's what's got everyone worked up. Some kid and a couple of puppets?"
"Well, it's not as simple as that," Tanaka said, trying to defend all the hype that was following around his newest house guest. "It's the way that he does it really."
"How does he do it then?" Kuukaku asked, more out of the commitment to continue the conversation along rather than out of actual interest. "I mean, seriously, wooden toys and a couple of strings. What's the big deal?"
Tanaka huffed and crossed his arms, brows furrowing as he sensed the complete lack of interest that he was getting from the other side of the conversation.
"That's the thing, he doesn't use strings," Tanaka told her. "They're without strings, although he still controls them somehow."
"What?" Kuukaku's interest in the conversation had just been revived and now she looked more confused than anything trying to figure out the logic in that statement. "That's not possible."
"It doesn't sound like it could, does it?" Tanaka admitted. "But I swear that's what happened. Now that I think about it, I remember seeing his hands twitching a lot, but he wasn't holding anything in his hands."
"The strings were probably just attached to his fingers," Kuukaku dismissed with a wave of her hand, turning her body to the side so that she could lean into the corner of her booth and cross her legs. "And there is such a thing as invisible wires you know. I know it doesn't looklike there's anything there, but if you look closely enough-"
"I know what invisible wires are," Tanaka said, his voice had the flat tone that practically screamed 'what-do-you-think-that-I'm-an-idiot-or-something?'. "And that would make sense if the puppets had stayed right by his feet the entire time."
"What do you mean?" Kuukaku asked bringing the beer to her lips once more as she an eyebrow in curiosity at this new rebuttal.
"I mean that the puppets were all over the place. They looked like they were alive," Tanaka said, using enough emphasis that it made Kuukaku want to grit her teeth. "If they were on strings, they sure didn't look like it. I'm pretty sure that things that you can't control something six feet away from you with some invisible wires."
"You'd be surprised," Kuukaku muttered under her breath.
"At least not the way he was doing it," Tanaka said quickly, overriding Kuukaku so that she wouldn't interrupt the flow of his argument.
"Haaa..." Kuukaku sighed, dumping some of the ashes out of the pipe that she had been neglecting for the past few minutes.
"What's he look like?"
Tanaka blinked a little at the suddenness of the random question, but he smirked when he realized that he had won the argument. Kuukaku's eyes narrowed when she realized what the man was thinking.
'For now...' she swore in her mind. 'You won this time, but later...'
"He's fairly young looking," Tanaka said, shrugging. "I think he's older than he looks though. He certainly acts like a crotchety old man most of the time. He's fairly slender too. I honestly didn't think he'd be much help lifting things, but he proved me wrong pretty fast. Shaggy bright red hair and brown eyes... he's a bit of a pretty boy, but you once you actually talk to him, that spell disappears real fast."
"So he's a grumpy, pretty boy?" Kuukaku summed up. "And you really think that he's 'older than he looks'? Sounds like the standard teenage idiot to me."
Tanaka rolled his eyes, but answered, "You just have to meet him to understand. When I have a conversation with him I feel like I'm talking to some one my age, not like I'm talking to my son."
"...Is that so?" Kuukaku asked rather skeptically, thinking of being able to have a normal conversation with her own brother like she did with her old friend Yoruichi.
"Well, Kuukaku, I guess I'll see you around," Tanaka said, getting up while draining the last of his drink.
"Yeah, alright," Kuukaku said, staying seated. "Maybe I'll stop by tomorrow or something."
Tanaka waved to her as he walked out the door. Kuukaku took a deep drag on her pipe as she thought of what she had been told. It certainly was one of the weirder things she had heard of in quite some time and it was definitely worth looking into.