Glass Memorial

Chapter 9 (1 of 2)

The battle had been short, it was the cleanin' up that took a lot longer. That was a week ago. The big guy, and his crew had come out to take care of the stragglers. Two villagers had died, and Cygnus hadn't been inclined to show much mercy to the dazed and stunned survivors scattered around the camp. It wasn't pretty, but I wasn't about to argue.

These guys, they weren't just out to rob the village. A kid could'a figured that out, just from seeing the wagons. Well, what was left of them anyway. I'd pegged 'em for supplies or transport or something. But, then I'd seen the metal bars, and padlocks. They were transport, just not the kind you'd want to be stuck inside.

Later I found out this kind of thing was happening across the country more often. Though this was the first big raid that the village had faced. The slavers, they were coming from the south. Mercenary's mostly, looking to make easy money, or trade for supplies, weapons. The best I could understand, there had been a big war with another country. But that was back when the big guy, Cygnus, had been younger.

Now, most of the fighting had died down, though problems in the southern country, Leeds, were beginning to spill across the border. But, around here, news was hard to come by. It wasn't like they could just turn on a TV, or read a paper. It was just as cut off as the smaller villages in China, and some parts of Japan, that I'd been to with the old man. Not that I'd really paid much attention to the news in the first place.

Here though, I needed to know what was going on. The people, the land, it was important if I wanted to find a way back home. So, I'd been spending just as much time trying to figure out the language as I was getting back into shape. Well, mostly. I'd never been too good at picking up Chinese, or the English being taught at Furinkan.

But, I was better at it than the panda. Enough to hold it over his head. Course, having a crazed Chinese fiancee chasing after me probably had something to do with picking up bits and pieces of the language. Not that I'd ever used it in front of her. That would have made things worse. Trouble seemed to find me easily enough without me goin' looking for it on purpose.

After we'd chased off the attackers that were able to flee on foot, one of the wounded survivors was all too willing to spout out all kinds of things to keep the chief from putting him out of his misery. I still don't know what he'd told the big man, but the priest had been dragged out of the temple kicking and screaming, probably cursing the whole village in the process. I made myself scarce for a little while after that. Besides, I hadn't exactly kept Redda out of harm's way like I was supposed to. No sense in making a scene and kicking the bee's nest.

Redda, yeah, her old man hadn't been happy about that in the least. But, he'd been too busy with everything else to do more than yell at her for a bit. Hadn't done anything about the sword I'd left her with either. She'd held onto it in the days since. I didn't blame her, the whole village was still on edge after the attack.

The junk that the priest had brought to the temple had all been tossed out. It was still sitting in a pile behind the building, replaced with a bunch of older stuff, probably from before. That's what it looked like to me, though visitors coming and going up that hill were less than when the priest had been settled in.

None of that really mattered much to me, as I wasn't a big fan of temples and shrines in the first place, no thanks to pops and his sticky fingers. Being chased after by angry shrine maidens, and hit by brooms was not my idea of a good time as a kid. Well, the being chased part hadn't been all that bad. Kinda fun when I sat and thought about it.

Right now, I had my run of the village, pretty much. But, it was a toss up as to if that was good or not. I'd been mostly ignored when I first got here, that was about the only thing that really changed. Before, people gave me odd looks now and then, but after a few days, I was less a curiosity, and more another pair of hands. The last thing I wanted to do was make trouble, or be a free-loader again. Besides, hard work was just another training method.

Though, after the mess with the slavers, I don't think anyone knew what to make of me. Half of the folks kept their distance more than they had at first. The rest, it felt like business as usual. I don't think that anyone other than the chief and the few at the front gate even saw what I did. Though I suppose it was too much of a coincidence that they found me moving through the ruined camp, pummeling the snot out of groggy bandits who were dumb enough to stick around after everything had been blown apart by the Hiryuu Shoten Ha I'd set off.

Redda had gotten a pretty good look though, especially once all the fog had been dispersed. It had done nothing short of convince her that I wasn't human like everyone else. Not that she needed more convincing, once I figured out that the name she'd been calling me since we first met was being spread around the village. Ides.

I still didn't know what it meant, though I had a pretty good idea as anyone else that called me that said it from a good distance away. Except the kids. Village kids just treated it like a game, and sometimes got a little too close before bolting whenever I pretended to suddenly notice them sneaking up. The whole thing felt like I was constantly playing Daruma-san whenever my back was turned.

Once the place started to settle back down, I spent a good amount of time just listening to Redda talk while I practiced my forms. I'd been cooped up for so long, it felt good to just have the room to move as I pleased. Everything was muscle-memory, and took little effort on my part. I was free to concentrate on what she was trying to tell me.

After a while, she started pointing to things and repeated a word or two. Catching on, I'd parrot back what she said, and then she would point to something else, a plant or a nearby building, things she'd shown me before, and I'd wrack my brain to come up with the proper name. After a few days, I had gathered a good chuck of new words to play around with.

It wasn't much, but it was a start. I also tried to focus on what the villagers said to each other in greeting, and what Redda and her old man said to each other at the beginning of meals, or before calling it a night. Some of it sounded the same as what other people said, and parts were different. The easiest bits to remember were the morning salutations, and the casual greetings for passing someone by on the street.

Eventually, I gave it a shot, and firmly crammed my foot in my mouth when I tried to tell Redda what I'd taken to mean 'it's good to see you.' It seemed easy enough when watching everyone else. Men said one thing to other men, and said it slightly different toward women. But, I guess I hadn't seen enough of the latter to realize there was different levels of familiarity, because the girl turned a bright shade of red. So I tried the other version, and she just started laughing. I'm not really sure which was less embarrassing.

Language lessons aside, I helped out with chores around the chief's place. Like his daughter, the big man didn't treat me any differently than before. If anything, he was a lot less serious, but that didn't take away from the fact that he was a lot more imposing than Mr. Tendou had ever been. He also wasn't nearly as overprotective of his daughter, but this was a different situation, and certainly a more dangerous place to live than Nerima. Then again, the man was built like a tank, with arms bigger than my head. Only a suicidal idiot would mess with this man's daughter.

In exchange for puttin' me up, and teaching me, I decided to give Redda a few pointers with that sword she'd held onto. She was more than happy to learn, and like I'd first thought, was entirely self taught. It was going to take time to undo the bad habits she'd drilled into herself, but we had plenty of that. No, the harder part was figuring out the best use for the heavier and shorter double edged blade.

I've had plenty of trainin' with all kinds of blades in the past, mostly Chinese ones, like the double-edged Jian and heavier curved Dao. But neither were good comparisons to this particular sword. It was going to take some getting used to, this heavy leaf edged blade.

A/N: Okay, I'm back in the game. Next part will be closer to the 3k mark.